Previous corpus studies have shown that the English spelling system is ‘morpho-graphic’ (Berg and Aronoff 2017) in that affixes are spelt in a consistent way (e.g., ‹ous› in famous) that distinguishes them from homophonous word endings without grammatical function (e.g., ‹us› in bonus). The present paper investigates if English spellers apply these regularities to the spelling of novel words implicitly and whether the application of those regularities is modulated by experience with the English writing system.

Participants with varying degrees of expertise in the English writing system were asked to spell novel words ending in /əs/, which were presented orally in either an adjective context (i.e., biasing towards the affix spelling ‹ous›) or a noun context (i.e., biasing towards an alternative spelling such as ‹us›). The results showed that the adjective context elicited significantly more ‹ous› spellings than the noun context, indicating that participants applied morpho-graphic spelling regularities to novel words to mark the appropriate lexical category. Additionally, there was a modulation by spelling ability: The higher participants’ expertise in the English spelling system was, the more novel words they spelt according to morpho-graphic spelling regularities.

In conclusion, English spellers are aware of the morpho-graphic spelling regularities without explicit instruction and apply these to novel words. They gradually induce the regularities from the input, which results in more robust rule application with increased experience and expertise in the English writing system.

先前的语料库研究表明英语拼写系统是'morpho-graphic'（Berg and Aronoff 2017），因为词缀以一致的方式拼写（例如，著名的‹ous› ），将其与没有语法功能的谐音词尾区分开来（例如，奖励中的‹us› ）。本文研究英语拼写者是否将这些规律性隐含地应用到新颖单词的拼写中，以及这些规律性的应用是否受到英语写作系统经验的调节。

要求在英语写作系统中具有不同专长的参与者拼写以/əs/结尾的新颖单词，这些单词在形容词上下文中（即偏向于词缀拼写‹ous›）或名词上下文（即，偏向于其他拼写，例如‹us›）。结果表明，形容词上下文比名词上下文引起了更多的‹ous›拼写，表明参与者对新词应用了词形图拼写规律以标记适当的词法类别。此外，还有拼写能力的调节：参与者在英语拼写系统中的专业知识越高，他们根据词形图拼写规律拼写的单词越新颖。

总之，英语拼写者在没有明确指导的情况下会意识到词形图的拼写规律，并将其应用于新颖的单词。他们从输入中逐渐得出规律性，从而导致规则的应用更加健壮，并增加了英语写作系统的经验和专业知识。