Counting affixes with morpholex: A response to McLean and Stoeckel (2021)
Tom Cobb · Reading in a Foreign Language · 2022
Some words in English are derived words, i.e., words with an affix that changes their part of speech, like know (v)→knowable (adj), or meaning, like pleasant (adj) → unpleasant (adj).As a reading teacher, I had always believed that derived words were not particularly problematic for my English as a second language (ESL) and foreign language (EFL) learners, owing to the recurrence of a relatively small number of different derivational affixes in what they were reading.Their problem seemed rather not knowing enough words in any form.The opposing belief, held by researchers like McLean (2017), is that the roughly 120 derivational affixes of English are inscrutable to their learners, even if they know the base words they are attached to, and thus present a significant obstacle to reading comprehension.Such a disparity of beliefs, held by people with similar experience of learners, texts, and affixes and a professional interest in the matter, shows the need for an objective way of counting affixes such as text analysis computer software might contribute to.