De verwerving van morfologische regels in schrift Over de schriftelijke verwerving van het morfeem -en in zelfstandige naamwoorden en werkwoorden

In order to provide textbook authors with empirical data on acquisition of written morphology of plural forms in nouns and verbs in Dutch, a study was undertaken in grade 3 and 4. Subjects individually completed a comprehension and a production task in which factors such as number (plural-singular), word type (nouns-verbs), and syntactic information about number (explicit information-no information) were systematically varied. It turned out that plural in nouns was easier than plural in verbs, plural with audible morphology was easier than plural with silent morphology, comprehension was easier than production, and syntactic information about number facilitates performance, especially in the production task. These findings are in line with findings for mother tongue speakers of English and French.