Children's analysis of derivational suffix meanings

This note examined the relation between school-age children's production and comprehension of derivational suffixes in nonsense words and their knowledge of suffix meaning in real derivatives. Results indicated that knowledge of derivational suffixes was used often in defining low-frequency derivatives and that it was significantly correlated with suffix production in the nonsense task. In addition, suffix productivity was found to be an important factor determining the comprehension as well as the production of particular suffixes to convey a range of meanings.