Project team members:

• Prof. Emer. Melita Kovačević, PhD
• Prof. Marijan Palmović, PhD
• Eva Pavlinušić Vilus. PhD
• Dora Knežević, PhD

Associates:

• Assis. Prof. Maja Kelić, PhD
• Anka Shamatava mag. logoped.

Understanding how speakers acquire and process morphologically complex forms is one of the important questions in psycholinguistics. Although morphology and phonology have often been studied separately, little is known about their interaction in the context of acquisition and processing. This interaction is encompassed by the concept of morphonotactic, within which a strong morphonotactic hypothesis has been developed. According to it, morphological information in words facilitates the acquisition and processing of morphologically rich languages. Previous research has somewhat confirmed SMH, but with certain methodological shortcomings. The main goal of the MORFON project is to conduct a comprehensive examination of language acquisition and processing within the framework of SMH, i.e. the influence of morphophonological information in language on language acquisition and processing. The current knowledge is sought to be further expanded by a) describing acquisition patterns in structurally different languages, Croatian and Georgian; b) describing phonological processes in the acquisition of these languages; and c) investigating language processing in children with developmental language disorder (DLD). Such an approach will enable additional expansion of theoretical knowledge about SMH within the framework of acquisition and processing, and will also help to see which pattern is developmentally expected and which indicates language deviations. Activities within MORFON include corpus research, extensive and systematic descriptions, and experimental studies. The project results are expected to enable the expansion of knowledge about language acquisition and processing. The project will also generate the first systematic descriptions of phonological processes in the acquisition of two languages. Finally, research on language processing in children with typical language development (TLD) and children with DLD will contribute to knowledge about expected developmental patterns and those that indicate deviations. These contributions are both theoretical and scientific (expanding knowledge about DLD and psycholinguistic factors of development and processing), and clinical (recognizing the problems and the possibility of informing experts about ways to create materials in speech language therapy for DLD, controlling for morphological and phonological features).