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DOI 10.1007/s11145-015-9603-y

Morphological awareness and bilingual word learning:

a longitudinal structural equation modeling study

Dongbo Zhang1 • Keiko Koda2 • Che Kan Leong3

 Springer Science+Business Media Dordrecht 2015

Abstract This longitudinal study examined the contribution of morphological

awareness to bilingual word learning of Malay–English bilingual children in Sin-
gapore where English is the medium of instruction. Participants took morphological
awareness and lexical inference tasks in both English and Malay twice with an
interval of about half a year, the first time at the end of Grade 3 (Time 1) and the
second time at the end of the first semester of Grade 4 (Time 2). Structural equation
modeling (SEM) analyses revealed that within both languages, morphological
awareness significantly predicted lexical inference at Time 1 as well as Time 2, and
the contribution also became strengthened over time. Cross-linguistic SEM analyses
showed that concurrently at both Time 1 and Time 2, English morphological
awareness only had a significant indirect effect on Malay lexical inference. The
exact indirect relationships, however, varied between Time 1 and Time 2. In
addition, an indirect effect of Time 1 English morphological awareness on Time 2
Malay lexical inference also surfaced. These findings suggest concurrent as well as
longitudinal cross-linguistic transfer of morphological awareness from English to
Malay.

Keywords Morphological awareness
Lexical inference
English
Malay
Word

learning
Cross-linguistic transfer
Indirect effect
Structural equation modeling

& Dongbo Zhang

zhangdo6@msu.edu
1
Department of Teacher Education, Michigan State University, East Lansing, MI 48824, USA
2
Carnegie Mellon University, Pittsburgh, PA, USA
3
University of Saskatchewan, Saskatoon, SK, Canada

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Introduction

Morphological awareness pertains to the ability to reflect on and manipulate the

meaningful components of words (i.e., morphemes), such as prefixes, roots, and
suffixes (Carlisle, 2003; Kuo & Anderson, 2006). Previous studies have found that
morphological awareness is a multi-dimensional and multi-faceted construct
entailing different types and levels of insights that grow with different
timetables (e.g., Tyler & Nagy, 1989). Studies across diverse languages among
first (L1) as well as second language (L2) learners have established a close
relationship of morphological awareness with vocabulary knowledge (e.g., Kieffer
& Lesaux, 2012; Lam et al., 2012; McBride-Chang et al., 2008). Logically, such a
relationship seems to be established through learners’ ability to use intra-word
morphological clues to infer meanings of unknown words or lexical inference
(Nagy, Carlisle, & Goodwin, 2014). Empirically, a few recent studies on English
learners have revealed that morphological awareness was significantly correlated
with lexical inference; it significantly contributed to vocabulary breadth indirectly
through the mediation of lexical inference; and it also appeared to contribute
directly to vocabulary breadth over and above the influence of lexical inference
(e.g., McCutchen, Logan, & Biangardi-Orpe, 2009; Zhang, 2013; Zhang & Koda,
2012).
Despite some preliminary research findings, there are several important issues
that remain to be further explored. Firstly, will the significant relationship between
morphological awareness and lexical inference remain and even become stronger
longitudinally across different languages? Secondly and more importantly,
research has also found that morphological awareness can be transferred from
one language to facilitate the development of reading-related abilities in the other
language of L2 learners or bilingual children. However, the pattern or mechanism
of transfer remains unclear. While many studies reported that L1 morphological
awareness directly or uniquely contributed to L2 reading over and above L2
morphological awareness (e.g., Ramirez, Chen, Geva, & Kiefer, 2010; Wang,
Cheng, & Chen, 2006; Zhang & Koda, 2014), others suggested that the cross-
linguistic relationship might well be indirect and established through L2
morphological awareness (i.e., transfer at the construct level) (e.g., Luo, Chen,
& Geva, 2014; Zhang, 2013). In addition, most studies on cross-linguistic transfer
of morphological awareness are cross-sectional, which leads to a concern about the
longitudinal, cross-linguistic relationship between morphological awareness and
reading-related abilities.
To address the above research gaps, we conducted a longitudinal study with a
focus on morphological awareness and bilingual word learning among Malay–
English bilingual children in Singapore where English is the medium of school
instruction. Specifically, the study aimed to address the concurrent as well as
longitudinal relationships of morphological awareness with lexical inference ability
both within English and Malay and across the two languages.

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Morphological awareness and word learning

Previous analyses of the words that English-speaking students were exposed to or

their vocabulary repertoire suggested that the students’ insights into morphology
should play an important role in their development of vocabulary knowledge (Nagy
& Anderson, 1984). Many studies that directly measured learners’ morphological
awareness and vocabulary knowledge also confirmed a close relationship between
the two competencies. It was found that across diverse languages and types of
learners, morphological awareness was a significant correlate of vocabulary
knowledge and predicted its growth. For example, Chen, Ramirez, Luo, Geva,
and Ku (2012) reported that English Language Learners’ (ELLs) derivational
awareness uniquely predicted their vocabulary knowledge after related variables
were controlled for; such a finding was true of both Spanish- and Chinese-speaking
ELLs. Kieffer and Lesaux’s (2012) Latent Growth Curve Modeling analysis
revealed a strong covariance between Spanish-speaking ELLs’ growth rates of
morphological awareness and vocabulary knowledge, suggesting that students with
a more rapid rate of growth in morphological awareness tended to have faster
growth of vocabulary knowledge. Similar findings have also been found among
children of other language backgrounds (e.g., McBride-Chang et al., 2008).
The findings of the aforementioned studies lead to a legitimate question about
why there is such a significant and robust relationship of morphological awareness
with vocabulary knowledge? While it is clear that strong morphological knowledge
reinforces the retention of word meanings in the mental lexicon (Sandra, 1994), the
contribution of morphological awareness to vocabulary growth can also be
attributed to learners’ use of morphological information to infer meanings of
unfamiliar words (Nagy et al., 2014). That is, morphological awareness entails the
ability to analyze a word into its meaningful components; as such, it promotes an
analytical or componential approach to word learning; learners can use their
morphological insights to segment an unfamiliar, morphologically complex word
into its morphemic constituents, extract semantic information from each, and
synthesize the meanings of the components to make an informed guess of the
meaning of the word. Different terms have been used to refer to such a meaning
inference process, such as morphological problem solving (Anglin, 1993),
morphological or morphemic analysis (Baumann et al., 2002; McCutchen et al.,
2009), morphological generalization (Wysocki & Jenkins, 1987), or lexical
inference/inferencing (Zhang, 2013; Zhang & Koda, 2012). Despite the difference
in name, the rationale of these terms seems similar.
The relationship of morphological awareness with lexical inference has also been
directly tested in a few recent studies across different types of learners and
languages. For example, Bowers and Kirby (2010) reported that English-speaking
4th and 5th graders’ base identification ability significantly predicted their use of the
base word knowledge to infer meanings of unknown derivational words, or their
‘‘morphological vocabulary’’. Zhang (2013) found that young Chinese English as a
Foreign Language (EFL) learners’ Chinese compound awareness significantly
predicted their compound word meaning inference, and their English compound

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awareness and derivational awareness also predicted their English compound and
derived word meaning inference, respectively.
While a close relationship between morphological awareness and lexical
inference has been established, there are issues that remain to be addressed, such
as the longitudinal relationship between morphological awareness and lexical
inference, given that the studies reviewed above are largely cross-sectional. Logic
suggests that the relationship between the two competencies could be strengthened
over time. To illustrate, with more refined morphological awareness (e.g.,
knowledge of more affixes, a more in-depth understanding of the functions of
suffixes, a stronger representation of morphemes and their structural and functional
relationships in the mental lexicon), learners would more likely use morphological
problem solving for new word learning. Reciprocally, with their increasing use of
morphological strategies to infer meanings of unknown derivatives, which are
prevalent in the curriculum and literacy practice of students at upper elementary or
higher grades, children would be processing derived words more frequently and
deeply. As a result, their morphological knowledge and representation of
morphological information in the mental lexicon would likely become stronger,
which would further contribute to their lexical inferencing success. It was, therefore,
an objective of this study to examine the relationship of morphological awareness
with lexical inference longitudinally with a focus on bilingual children’s two
languages.

Cross-linguistic transfer of morphological awareness

Cross-linguistic transfer has long caught the attention of L2 reading or biliteracy

researchers (Cummins, 1991; Geva, 2014; Koda, 2005, 2008). According to Koda’s
(2005, 2008) Transfer Facilitation Model, metalinguistic awareness once developed
in learners’ L1 can be transferred to facilitate the development of L2 reading
abilities; and L1 influence on L2 reading needs to be accommodated with learners’
L2 print experiences and is subject to the influence of L1–L2 linguistic distance.
The Transfer Facilitation Model provides a theoretically appealing account of the
various factors involved in L1 influence on the development of L2 reading abilities.
Hypothetically, an aspect of metalinguistic awareness that is characteristic of or
shared between L1 and L2 would be readily serviceable in L2 reading development.
On the other hand, how exactly L1 transfer happens remains largely unclear.
Specifically, despite an increasing number of studies recently on cross-linguistic
transfer in L2 reading or biliteracy acquisition, we still know little about how L1
metalinguistic awareness is related to the growth of L2 reading abilities, and what
role L2 morphological awareness plays in this process.
Recent research on transfer of morphological awareness (and other skills as well,
such as phonological awareness) in L2 reading or biliteracy acquisition largely
adopted a design that aims to document whether L1 morphological awareness
uniquely or directly predicts an L2 reading variable over and above the effects of
other variables that may also impact L2 reading, notably L2 morphological
awareness. Typically, morphological awareness and reading measures parallel in L1
and L2 are administered to one ore more groups of learners, and the variables are

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then subject to some cross-linguistic, correlation/covariance-based analysis (e.g.,

Deacon, Wade-Woolley, & Kirby 2007; Ramirez et al., 2010; Wang et al., 2006;
Zhang & Koda, 2014). A significant unique contribution of L1 morphological
awareness to L2 reading over and above L2 morphological awareness is considered
as occurrence of transfer, whereas failure to find such a unique relationship is
usually interpreted as a lack of transfer. For example, in a study on Grades 4 and 7
Spanish-speaking ELLs, Ramirez et al. (2010) found that after controlling for grade
and English derivational awareness, corresponding Spanish derivational awareness
significantly and uniquely predicted English word reading; such a significant cross-
linguistic effect, however, did not surface for English derivational awareness. It was
therefore concluded that there was cross-linguistic transfer of morphological
awareness from Spanish to English, but not from English to Spanish.
A question to ask about the above type of evidence of transfer is what exactly that
unique effect (over and above L2 morphological awareness) is and how such a
cross-linguistic effect should be theoretically interpreted. Logically, if analytic skills
related to L1 morphemes and morphological structures are available to learners
when they read in an L2, a more immediate cross-linguistic relationship would be
expected between those skills and corresponding skills in the L2. Given an expected
relationship between morphological awareness and a morpheme-based reading skill
in the L2, the effect of L1 morphological awareness on the L2 reading skill might
well be indirect via the mediation of L2 morphological awareness. In a structural
equation modeling (SEM) study on young Chinese-speaking EFL learners in China,
Zhang (2013) found that Chinese compound awareness, while significantly
predicted English compound awareness (i.e., transfer at the construct level), did
not uniquely and significantly contribute to English compound word meaning
inference after the effect of English compound awareness (and Chinese compound
word meaning inference) was controlled for. Instead, the cross-linguistic transfer
effect of Chinese compound awareness on English compound word meaning
inference was achieved indirectly through English compound awareness. Luo et al.
(2014) made a similar observation after they found that Canadian Chinese-English
bilinguals’ English compound awareness only had a significant indirect effect on
Chinese character reading through Chinese compound awareness, suggesting ‘‘a
significant indirect transfer effect from English compound awareness to Chinese
character reading, mediated through Chinese compound awareness’’ (p. 110) (the
italicization emphasis is ours.)
Overall, given the different findings in the literature, no reliable conclusion could
be made on how exactly morphological awareness transfers in biliteracy acquisition,
and more research is certainly warranted on such a topic. A particularly important
issue is related to the word facilitation in the Transfer Facilitation Model (Koda,
2005, 2008), which seems to imply a developmental effect of L1 morphological
awareness on L2 morpheme-based reading skills (i.e., transfer effect on growth of
L2 reading). Concurrent correlational associations between L1 morphological
awareness and L2 morphological awareness or L2 reading, which were the primary
focus of most previous studies, provide only limited insights into how L1
morphological awareness is transferred in L2 reading or biliteracy development
(Genesee, Geva, Dressler, & Kamil, 2006; Geva, 2014). Longitudinal studies on

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how earlier L1 morphological awareness contributes to later L2 reading seem to

provide a better opportunity to examine possibly causal nature of L1 morphological
awareness transfer in L2 reading (Deacon & Cain, 2011).

The present study

To summarize, the above literature review shows two important empirical findings
on morphological awareness. Morphological awareness is a significant contributor
to learners’ ability to use sub-lexical morphological clues to infer meanings of
unfamiliar words or lexical inference. There are close cross-linguistic relationships
between morphological awareness and morpheme-related reading abilities. How-
ever, several issues remain unexplored and warrant further explorations. In
particular, we know little about the longitudinal relationships between morpholog-
ical awareness and lexical inference both within and across languages.
To examine the aforementioned issues, we conducted the present longitudinal
study with a focus on ethnic Malay children who were learning to be biliterate in
English and Malay in Singapore. Specially, this study aimed to address three
research questions.

1. Does morphological awareness predict lexical inference concurrently as well as

longitudinally?
2. How is English morphological awareness related to Malay lexical inference
concurrently, and does the pattern of cross-linguistic relationship change over
time?
3. How is earlier English morphological awareness related to later Malay lexical
inference?

Methods

Participants

Participants were Malay–English Singaporean bilingual children from three

neighborhood schools, which are public schools where student population is
ethnically diverse. Singapore, an island country just off the Malay peninsula in
Southeast Asia, is a multilingual society with a population of about five million that
is comprised of three major ethnic groups: Chinese (about 74 % of the population),
Malays (about 13 %), and Indians (about 9.1 %) (Singapore Department of
Statistics, 2014). English and the ethnic languages or Mother Tongues (MT) of the
three major ethnic groups (i.e., Chinese, Malay, and Tamil) make the four official
languages of the country.
Bilingualism is the corner stone of the educational system in Singapore
(Shepherd, 2005). Ever since the founding of the Republic in 1965, Singapore has
adopted a policy of ‘‘English-knowing bilingualism’’ (Pakir, 1991). That is, it is
mandated that all students become proficient in English, which is the medium of

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school instruction in addition to being a school subject itself, and at the same time,
learn their respective MT in school. Formal instructional experience with both
English and MT begins at the commencement of schooling (Grade 1) and continues
for 12 years to the end of secondary education (Grade 12). Based on the importance
ascribed, English is often designated ‘‘first school language,’’ whereas a MT
‘‘second school language’’ in Singapore (Pakir, 2008, p. 191).
Given its high-stake status in the educational system in Singapore, and its global
influence as a lingua franca, English has taken a preeminent position in the
academic, social, and professional lives of Singaporeans, and a significant shift from
ethnic language to English has been observed in Singaporean families in the past
decades (Ministry of Education, 2009). Along with this familial language shift, the
interest of children in learning their MT has been declining, and challenges to their
development and maintenance of a satisfactory level of skills, particularly literacy
skills, in their MT have also been constantly reported (e.g., Zhao & Liu, 2010).
Consequently, it seems reasonable to expect that as students progress in their
schooling, English will gradually become their dominant language and English
literacy their primary literacy, whereas MT will only play an ancillary role in their
school life.
The participants were administered the same set of English and Malay tasks two
times with an interval of a semester or about half a year: the first time at the end of
Grade 3 (Time 1) and the second time at the end of the first semester of Grade 4
(Time 2). When Time 1 data were collected, there were 220 children in the three
schools taking Malay as their MT. A small number of them did not participate in
this study or complete all the tasks in the present study at both times, due to various
reasons, such as no parent consent, absence from school, and mobility of student
population. Eventually, included in the final analysis were 211 children, among
whom there were 108 boys and 103 girls, with an average age of 9.40 (SD = .33) at
the end of Grade 3 (or about 10 years old at the end of the first semester of Grade 4).

Focal languages

This study focused on Malay–English biliteracy, because Malay and English are
linguistically close in that both are morphophonemic and highly productive in
derivational morphology. An examination of such a case with a focus on derivation
would provide a very good opportunity to examine the role of morphological
awareness in lexical inference, particularly transfer of morphological awareness.
English morphologically complex words can be formed through derivation where a
derivational prefix and/or a suffix is added to a base word. Such is also true of
Malay, a language that belongs to the Austronesian language family (Tadmor,
2009). In Singapore, the Latin alphabet script of Malay or Rumi is used, which is a
transparent orthography that strictly follows the rule of Grapheme-to-Phoneme
Correspondence. Morphologically complex words in Malay are formed in three
major ways, including compounding, duplication, as well as affixation (Tadmor,
2009). Malay affixation morphology is largely derivational in nature, with little
inflectional morphology like the English suffixes marking plural or past tense.
According to Prentice (1987), there are about 25 derivational affixes in Malay that

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are of three major types: prefixes (e.g., pe-: masak [to cook]/pemasak [the person
who cooks]), suffixes (e.g., -an: hangun [to raise]/hangunan [building]), and
circumfixes (e.g., per…an: makan [to eat]/permakanan [the habit of eating]).

English and Malay tasks

The following four tasks, which were parallel in English and Malay, were
administered twice with an interval of about half a year. All tasks were printed on
paper and were group-administered to children in their regular English and Malay
classes. To avoid possible influence of decoding on children’s performance on the
tasks, the instructions and the items of each task were read aloud to children as they
were working on its printed version. In addition to the tasks below, at Time 1 only,
all children also completed, as a nonverbal intelligence test, the first three sets (36
items) of the Raven’s Standard Progressive Matrix (Raven, Raven, & Court, 1998).

Morphological relatedness

This morphological awareness task asked children to judge whether the second
word in a word pair ‘‘came from,’’ or was morphologically related to, the first word.
In both English and Malay, there were 30 items, including 15 related (e.g., English:
think and thinker; Malay: juta and jutawan) and 15 unrelated (e.g., English: too and
tooth; Malay: masa and masalah) word pairs. No Malay words that were borrowed
from English (e.g., teknologi) appeared in this task and the following Malay tasks.
The reliability (Cronbach’s a) of this task, and all other tasks, for English and Malay
at Time 1 and Time 2 are shown in Table 1.

Affix choice (real)

Based on Nagy, Berninger, and Abbott (2006) and Tyler and Nagy (1989), this task
measured children’s morphological awareness with a focus on their knowledge of
the grammatical functions of derivational affixes. They were presented lexically and
grammatically simple sentences (e.g., It is not easy to measure the ___ of light.) and
were asked to choose a derived word to fill in the blank from three choice words that
shared a real base (intensely, intensify, intensity). The format of the Malay task was
the same. For example, Ahmad menangis kerana dia ___ di padang, with kejatuhan
(ke- ? jatuh ? -an) (an accident of falling), terjatuh (ter- ? jatuh) (accidentally
fall), and menjatuh (men- ? jatuh) (dropping) as the three choice words that had the
same base jatuh (fall). There were 15 items in both English and Malay.

Affix choice (pseudo)

This morphological awareness task was the same as the Affix Choice (real) except
that it had as choice words three pseudo derivatives formed with the same decodable
base. For example, I could feel the ___. (froody, froodful, froodment). A child would
be able to choose froodment as the answer if s/he knew that -ment is a nominalizer
suffix. The same designing principle applied to the Malay task. For example, Syida

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Table 1 Performance on English and Malay tasks at Time 1 and Time 2

Time 1 Time 2 t

M (SD) Reliability M (SD) Reliability

English tasks
Morphological relatedness 21.70 (5.19) .821 24.37 (5.32) .872 7.380
Affix choice (real) 8.39 (3.39) .754 10.15 (3.89) .846 6.910
Affix choice (pseudo) 6.72 (3.31) .720 8.48 (3.49) .752 5.871
Meaning inference 5.83 (2.39) .775 7.29 (2.81) .709 5.673
Malay tasks
Morphological relatedness 20.54 (4.55) .728 22.72 (4.36) .714 6.395
Affix choice (real) 10.56 (2.73) .689 11.96 (3.59) .632 5.916
Affix choice (pseudo) 7.18 (2.66) .636 8.61 (3.08) .638 6.267
Meaning inference 6.62 (2.44) .634 8.45 (2.76) .694 7.314

All t test results were significant with time 2 better than time 1. All ps \ .001

mahu mengangkat ___ yang besar itu, with dipelikat, pelikatkan, and pelikatan as
the three choice words that shared pelikat as the pseudo base. There were 15 items
in both languages.

Meaning inference

A meaning inference task was used to measure children’s word learning or

lexical inference ability, which was operationalized as the ability to apply
knowledge of component morphemes and word structure to infer meanings of
unfamiliar derived words. There were 20 target derived words in both languages.
Each word was followed by four meaning interpretations; children were asked to
select the best one for each word. To minimize the possibility that the task might
tap breadth of vocabulary knowledge rather than lexical inference—that is,
children might have active knowledge of a word without a need to go through
any inferencing process using intra-word morphological clues, the research team,
which included an experienced Malay teacher educator and Ministry of
Education English curriculum officer who had expert knowledge of local
Malay/English curriculum, first generated a larger pool of candidate words and
then consulted the teachers of the participants. Only those (whole) words that
were judged by the teachers as unfamiliar to children and whose component
morphemes (prefix, suffix, and stem) familiar to children eventually came into
the task. For example, the English word familiarize was followed by four
choices: to make known, to become famous, a large family, and with a knowledge
of; the Malay word kesetiaan (allegiance, fidelity, or loyalty) has as four choices
mendengar arahan seseorang, sangat lembut dan berbudi, kelebihan yang
diperolehi, and ketaatan terhadap seseorang.

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Data analysis method

To address the three research questions, we primarily used SEM to analyze the data.
All SEM analyses was conducted on EQS. 6.1 (Bentler, 2005). We used multiple
indexes for the assessment of model fit, including model v2 and normed v2 (i.e., the
ratio between v2 value and degree of freedom or v2/df), Goodness-of-Fit Index
(GFI), Comparative Fit Index (CFI), Standardized Root Mean Square Residual
(SRMR), and Root Mean Square Error of Approximation (RMSEA) (Kline, 2005).
Recommendations for acceptable normed v2 range from as high as 5.0 to as low as
2.0 (Tabachnick & Fidell, 2007). For GFI and CFI, a value larger than .90 is usually
considered as indicating good model fit (Kline, 2005; Marsh, Hau, & Wen, 2004).
For SRMR, Hu and Bentler (1999) suggest that a cutoff value close to .08 is needed
for a model with relatively good fit. Kline (2005), however, contends that any value
less than .08 is considered favorable. For RMSEA, values less than .05 are usually
considered as close fit, between .05 and .08 fair fit, between .08 and .10 mediocre fit,
and greater than .10 poor fit (Kline, 2005; MacCallum, Browne, & Sugawara, 1996).

Results

Children’s performance on all the English and Malay tasks at both Time 1 and Time
2 is presented in Table 1. Pair-wise t tests showed Time 2 performance was
significantly better than that at Time 1 for all tasks, all ps \ .001. The bivariate
correlations between all tasks within and across languages at both Time 1 and Time
2 are presented in Table 2; and relevant correlations are highlighted below in the
sections where each research question is addressed. Neither age nor the performance
on the Raven’s Standard Progressive Matrix (M = 25.54, SD = 6.06) had a
significant correlation with any English and Malay variable. Therefore, the analyses
reported below did not include age and nonverbal intelligence.

Research question 1: concurrent and longitudinal relationships

within languages

To address research question 1, we examined the concurrent and longitudinal

relationships of morphological awareness with lexical inference within English and
Malay, respectively. As shown in Table 2, within both English and Malay and at
both Time 1 and Time 2, the three morphological awareness measures significantly
correlated with each other, and their correlations with lexical inference were also
significant. It also appears true for both languages that the correlations of
morphological awareness with lexical inference were stronger at Time 2.
A set of four SEM analyses was performed to examine the predictive effect of
morphological awareness on lexical inference concurrently at Time 1 and Time 2
for both languages. In these SEM models, within each language, Morphological
Relatedness, Affix Choice (real), and Affix Choice (pseudo) at Time 1 and Time 2
were used to indicate latent variables of Morphological Awareness at the two times,
respectively; at each time, the latent variable predicted Lexical Inference, which had

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 Table 2 Bivariate correlations between all English and Malay tasks at Time 1 and Time 2
1 2 3 4 5 6 7 8 9 10 11 12 13 14 15 16

1 EMA1T1 –
2 EMA2T1 .465 –
3 EMA3T1 .402 .712 –
4 ELEXT1 .317 .413 .410 –
5 EMA1T2 .574 .485 .433 .317 –
6 EMA2T2 .460 .647 .555 .430 .654 –
7 EMA3T2 .408 .630 .589 .424 .483 .745 –
8 ELEXT2 .446 .529 .490 .296 .431 .517 .529 –
9 MMA1T1 .459 .407 .379 .314 .439 .410 .252 .254 –
10 MMA2T1 .233 .187 .220 .201 .286 .381 .252 .241 .375 –
11 MMA3T1 .354 .413 .445 .224 .386 .423 .335 .353 .365 .497 –
Morphological awareness and bilingual word learning…

12 MLEXT1 .280 .384 .408 .223 .223 .354 .382 .313 .245 .376 .396 –
13 MMA1T2 .537 .449 .380 .192 .664 .602 .451 .449 .490 .418 .429 .350 –
14 MMA2T2 .220 .300 .318 .244 .358 .441 .306 .230 .365 .509 .503 .345 .542 –
15 MMA3T2 .277 .467 .437 .239 .477 .617 .542 .443 .241 .389 .526 .355 .473 .601 –
16 MLEXT2 .300 .305 .345 .159 .477 .563 .493 .467 .274 .337 .455 .369 .387 .490 .566 –

EMA1T1, English Morphological Relatedness (Time 1); EMA2T1, English Affix Choice (real) (Time 1); EMA3T1, English Affix Choice (pseudo) (Time 1); ELEXT1,
English Lexical Inference (Time 1); EMA1T2, English Morphological Relatedness (Time 2); EMA2T2, English Affix Choice (real) (Time 2); EMA3T2, English Affix
Choice (pseudo) (Time 2); ELEXT2, English Lexical Inference (Time 2); MMA1T1, Malay morphological Relatedness (Time 1); MMA2T1, Malay Affix Choice (real)
(Time 1); MMA3T1, Malay Affix Choice (pseudo) (Time 1); MLEXT1, Malay Lexical Inference (Time 1); MMA1T2, Malay Morphological Relatedness (Time 2);
MMA2T2, Malay Affix Choice (real) (Time 2); MMA3T2, Malay Affix Choice (pseudo) (Time 2); MLEXT1, Malay Lexical Inference (Time 2)
p \ .10 for r = .159; p \ .05 for .187 B r B .192; p \ .01 for .201 B r B .254; p \ .001 for .280 B r B .745

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only one indicator. All the SEM models showed very good model fit, and it was true
for both English and Malay that the contribution of Morphological Awareness to
Lexical Inference was significant at Time 1 as well as Time 2, and the contribution
was also greater at Time 2 than at Time 1.
Specifically, the SEM model that tested Time 1 relationships within English
showed v2(2) = 1.90, p = .370, with excellent model fit (v2/df = 0.95,
GFI = 1.000, CFI = 1.000, SRMR = .019, and RMSEA = .000). At Time 1,
Morphological Relatedness (b = .525, R2 = .276), Affix Choice (real) (b = .878,
R2 = .771), and Affix Choice (pseudo) (b = .810, R2 = .656) all significantly
loaded on a latent variable of Time 1 English Morphological Awareness, which
significantly predicted Time 1 English Lexical Inference (b = .499) and explained
about 24.1 % of its variance (all ps \ .001). Similar findings were observed for
Time 2 English as well. The SEM model showed v2(2) = 8.502, p = .014, with
very good model fit (v2/df = 4.251, GFI = .975, CFI = .975, SRMR = .032, and
RMSEA = .147). At Time 2, the three English morphological awareness measures
also significantly loaded on a latent variable of Time 2 English Morphological
Awareness; b = .683, R2 = .466; b = .935, R2 = .875; b = .793, R2 = .629;
respectively (all ps \ .001). Like at Time 1, the latent variable also significantly
predicted Lexical Inference at Time 2 (b = .580) and explained about 33.7 % of its
variance (p \ .001).
Similarly, the Malay SEM model at Time 1 showed v2(2) = .812, p = .666, with
excellent model fit (v2/df = 0.406, GFI = .998, CFI = 1.000, SRMR = .014, and
RMSEA = .000). At Time 1, all three morphological awareness significantly
loaded on a latent variable of Time 1 Malay Morphological Awareness; b = .496,
R2 = .246; b = .683, R2 = .466; and b = .724, R2 = .525 (all ps \ .001), for
Morphological Relatedness, Affix Choice (real), and Affix Choice (pseudo),
respectively. The latent variable significantly predicted Time 1 Malay Lexical
Inference (b = .533) and explained about 28.4 % of its variance (p \ .001). The
Time 2 Malay SEM model showed v2(2) = 3.583, p = .167, also with very good
model fit (v2/df = 1.792, GFI = .987, CFI = .991, SRMR = .025, and
RMSEA = .075). The three morphological awareness measures significantly loaded
on a latent variable of Time 2 Malay Morphological Awareness (b = .635,
R2 = .404; b = .771, R2 = .594; b = .792, R2 = .627; respectively) (all
ps \ .001), which also significantly predicted Time 2 Malay Lexical Inference
(b = .666) and explained about 44.3 % of its variance (p \ .001).
The longitudinal relationships between the two competencies were also
examined. In the longitudinal SEM model for each language, the latent variable
of Time 1 Morphological Awareness predicted Time 2 Lexical Inference; in
addition, Time 1 Lexical Inference was also in the model to control for any
autoregressive effect. It predicted Time 2 Lexical Inference and was predicted by
Time 1 Morphological Awareness. The longitudinal model for English showed
v2(4) = 6.247, p = .181; and the model fit was very good, v2/df = 1.562,
GFI = .992, CFI = .991, SRMR = .034, and RMSEA = .063). Over and above
Time 1 English Lexical Inference, Time 1 English Morphological Awareness
significantly predicted Time 2 English Lexical Inference (b = .630, p \ .001); and
the two predictors together explained about 37.1 % of the variance in Time 2

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English Lexical Inference. Similarly, the longitudinal model for Malay showed
v2(4) = 1.095, p = .895; and the model fit was also very good, v2/df = 0.274,
GFI = .997, CFI = 1.000, SRMR = .014, and RMSEA = .000). After controlling
for the effect of Time 1 Malay Lexical Inference, Time 1 Malay Morphological
Awareness significantly predicted Time 2 Malay Lexical Inference (b = .553,
p \ .001), and together with the autoregressor, explained about 31 % of its
variance.

Research question 2: concurrent cross-linguistic relationships at time 1

and time 2

As shown in Table 2, the cross-linguistic correlations between all measures of

morphological awareness and lexical inference in English and Malay were
significant at both Time 1 and Time 2. A set of SEM analyses was first conducted
to further investigate the concurrent cross-linguistic relationships between morpho-
logical awareness and lexical inference in the two languages, first for Time 1 and
then for Time 2. The findings of the longitudinal, cross-linguistic relationships are
presented in the next section. On the basis of our earlier discussion that English is
the primary literacy of Singaporean students (see the Methods section), we
hypothesized a transferred effect of English morphological awareness on Malay
lexical inference.
In the baseline model of concurrent cross-linguistic relationships (both Time 1
and Time 2), like in the within-language analyses presented earlier, English and
Malay Morphological Relatedness, Affix Choice (real), and Affix Choice (pseudo)
were the indicators of the latent variables of English and Malay Morphological
Awareness, respectively; Lexical Inference in each language had only one indicator
(i.e., the meaning inference task). Based on previous research that modeled the
cross-linguistic relationships between morphological awareness and reading-related
abilities (e.g., Zhang, 2013), we hypothesized that Malay Lexical Inference would
be predicted by Malay Morphological Awareness, English Morphological Aware-
ness, as well as English Lexical Inference. In addition, English Morphological
Awareness was hypothesized to predict Malay Morphological Awareness (i.e.,
transfer at the construct level) and English Lexical Inference (like in the within-
language analysis).
The baseline model for Time 1 showed v2(17) = 45.885, p \ .001, with good or
acceptable model fit (v2/df = 2.70, GFI = .944, CFI = .929, SRMR = .068, and
RMSEA = .094). The factor loadings in the measurement model were very similar
to those found in the within-language analysis reported earlier. In the baseline
structural model, Time 1 English Morphological Awareness significantly predicted
Time 1 English Lexical Inference (R2 = .249, b = .499, p \ .001) as well as Time
1 Malay Morphological Awareness (R2 = .449, b = .670, p \ .001). The three
hypothesized predictors together explained about 32.5 % of the variance in Time 1
Malay Lexical Inference. However, only Time 1 Malay Morphological Awareness
was a significant, unique predictor (b = .444, p \ .01). Neither Time 1 English
Morphological Awareness (b = .114, p = .184) nor Time 1 English Lexical

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Inference (b = -.019, p = .808) was a significant, unique predictor after control-

ling for the effects of the other two predictors.
A Lagrange Multiplier Test did not suggest that adding any path would
significantly improve the v2 value of the baseline model. However, a follow-up
Wald Test suggested that removing the non-significant path from Time 1 English
Morphological Awareness to Time 1 Malay Lexical Inference would not
significantly affect the model fit. Therefore, a modified model was tested with
that path removed. The new model showed v2(18) = 47.569, p \ .001 with good or
acceptable model fit (v2/df = 2.64, GFI = .942, CFI = .927, SRMR = .068, and
RMSEA = .097). As the modified model was nested within the baseline model, the
two models were compared using a v2 difference test (Kline, 2005), which showed
that the new model was not significantly different from the baseline model, Dv2
(1) = 1.684, p = .194. As the new model was more parsimonious, it was accepted
as the final model that represented the cross-linguistic relationship between
morphological awareness and lexical inference in English and Malay at Time 1.
Figure 1 shows a graphic representation of the final model.
In the final model, Time 1 English Morphological Awareness remained
significantly predictive of Time 1 English Lexical Inference (b = .499,
R2 = .249). It was also a significant predictor of Time 1 Malay Morphological

Fig. 1 Final model of cross-linguistic relationship between morphological awareness and lexical
inference in English and Malay at Time 1. EMA1T1, English Morphological Relatedness (Time 1);
EMA2T1, English Affix Choice (real) (Time 1); EMA3T1, English Affix Choice (pseudo) (Time 1);
EMAT1, latent variable of English Morphological Awareness (Time 1); MMA1T1, Malay Morphological
Relatedness (Time 1); MMA2T1, Malay Affix Choice (real) (Time 1); MMA3T1, Malay Affix Choice
(pseudo) (Time 1); MMAT1, latent variable of Malay Morphological Awareness (Time 1); ELEXT1,
English Lexical Inference (Time 1); MLEXT1, Malay Lexical Inference (Time 1)

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Awareness (b = .706, R2 = .498). Time 1 English Lexical Inference and Time 1

Malay Morphological Awareness together explained about 34.5 % of the variance
in Time 1 Malay Lexical Inference. However, only Time 1 Malay Morphological
Awareness was a significant, unique predictor (b = .582, p \ .001); the unique
effect of Time 1 English Lexical Inference did not achieve significance over and
above Time 1 Malay Morphological Awareness (b = .014, p = .852). the indirect
effect of Time 1 English Morphological Awareness on Time 1 Malay Lexical
Inference was significant, b = .418, p \ .001. It can be seen in Fig. 1 that such an
indirect effect could be achieved through two different paths, one through Time 1
English Lexical Inference, and the other through Time 1 Malay Morphological
Awareness. EQS, the SEM program, does not report component indirect effects
when there are multiple indirect paths. Thus, it was not known whether Time 1
English Morphological Awareness indirectly contributed to Time 1 Malay Lexical
Inference through Time 1 Malay Morphological Awareness alone or jointly through
both Time 1 Malay Morphological Awareness and Time 1 English Lexical
Inference.
To disentangle and test the significance of the two components of the indirect
effect, we employed the bootstrapping method, a data-based simulation method for
statistical inference that uses empirical sample data to generate a certain number of
bootstrap samples (typically 1000) through random sampling with replacement
(Shrout & Bolger, 2002). We computed both 95 and 90 % Confidence Intervals (CI)
to examine the frequency distribution of indirect effects parameters. It was found
that the indirect effect of Time 1 English Morphological Awareness on Time 1
Malay Lexical Inference through Time 1 Malay Morphological Awareness was
significant, for 90 % (0.2395–0.4914) as well as 95 % CI (0.2281–0.5191), as
neither included zero. However, a significant effect failed to surface for the indirect
effect through Time 1 English Lexical Inference; both 90 % (-0.0544 to 0.0661)
and 95 % CIs (-0.0692 to 0.0820) included zero. Taken together, the findings
suggest that the significant indirect effect of Time 1 English Morphological
Awareness on Time 1 Malay Lexical Inference was largely contributed by the joint
relationship of the two competencies with Time 1 Malay Morphological Awareness.
The same set of analyses was performed on cross-linguistic relationships at Time
2. As shown in Table 2, the cross-linguistic correlations between English and Malay
at Time 2 were all significant, and also appear to be stronger than at Time 1. The
baseline SEM model for Time 2 indicated v2(17) = 56.564 (p \ .001), v2/
df = 3.33, GFI = .910, CFI = .921, SRMR = .059, and RMSEA = .136. In the
baseline structural model, similar to the finding of the within-language analysis
reported earlier, Time 2 English Morphological Awareness was a significant
predictor of Time 2 English Lexical Inference (R2 = .365, b = .604, p \ .001). It
also significantly predicted Time 2 Malay Morphological Awareness (R2 = .678,
b = .824, p \ .001). Among the three predictors of Time 2 Malay Lexical
Inference, only Time 2 Malay Morphological Awareness was a significant unique
contributor, b = .408, p \ .05. The unique effect of neither Time 2 English Lexical
Inference (b = .138, p = .122) nor Time 2 English Morphological Awareness
(b = .200, p = .284) was significant after controlling for the other two predictors.

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Similar to the model modification for Time 1, a Lagrange Multiplier Test did not
suggest that adding any path to the baseline model would significantly improve the
model fit. A follow-up Wald Test suggested that removing the non-significant path
from Time 2 English Morphological Awareness to Time 2 Malay Lexical Inference
would make the model more parsimonious without significantly affecting the model
fit. Therefore, a modified model was tested with that path removed, which showed v2
(18) = 57.664 (p \ .001), v2/df = 3.20, GFI = .910, CFI = .921, SRMR = .060,
and RMSEA = .133. Based on the cutoff values mentioned earlier, all indexes except
RMSEA suggest that the modified model had good or acceptable model fit. It was not
significantly different from the baseline model, Dv2 (1) = 1.100, p = .294, and
therefore, was accepted as the final model that represented the cross-linguistic
relationship between morphological awareness and lexical inference in English and
Malay at Time 2 (see Fig. 2 for a graphic representation of this model).
In the measurement model of the final SEM model for Time 2, all factor loadings
of the latent variables were very similar to the ones found in the Time 2 within-
language SEM analyses. In the structural part, Time 2 English Morphological
Awareness remained a significant predictor of Time 2 English Lexical Inference
(b = .603, R2 = .364). It also significantly predicted Time 2 Malay Morphological

Fig. 2 Final model of cross-linguistic relationship between morphological awareness and lexical
inference in English and Malay at Time 2. EMA1T2, English Morphological Relatedness (Time 2);
EMA2T2, English Affix Choice (real) (Time 2); EMA3T2, English Affix Choice (pseudo) (Time 2);
EMAT2, latent variable of English Morphological Awareness (Time 2); MMA1T2, Malay Morphological
Relatedness (Time 2); MMA2T2, Malay Affix Choice (real) (Time 2); MMA3T2, Malay Affix Choice
(pseudo) (Time 2); MMAT2, latent variable of Malay Morphological Awareness (Time 2); ELEXT2,
English Lexical Inference (Time 2); MLEXT2, Malay Lexical Inference (Time 2)

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Awareness (b = .838, R2 = .703), suggesting an even stronger cross-linguistic

transfer effect at the construct level at Time 2. Time 2 English Lexical Inference and
Time 2 Malay Morphological Awareness together explained about 46.1 % of the
variance in Time 2 Malay Lexical Inference. After the direct path from Time 2
English Morphological Awareness to Time 2 Malay Lexical Inference removed, the
unique effect of both predictors of Time 2 Malay Lexical Inference was significant,
b = .578, p \ .001 and b = .169, p \ .05 for Time 2 Malay Morphological
Awareness and Time 2 English Lexical Inference, respectively.
The indirect effect of Time 2 English Morphological Awareness on Time 2
Malay Lexical Inference was also significant, and appeared stronger than at Time 1,
b = .586, p \ .001. We conducted bootstrapping analysis again to disentangle and
estimate the two components of the indirect effect of Time 2 English Morphological
Awareness on Time 2 Malay Lexical Inference. It was found that the path through
Time 2 Malay Morphological Awareness was significant; neither 90 %
(0.2434–0.4547) nor 95 % (0.2284–0.4906) CI included zero. Different from the
finding at Time 1, a significant effect also surfaced for the path through Time 2
English Lexical Inference; both 90 % (0.0179–0.1398) and 95 % (0.0020–0.1558)
CIs did not include zero. Taken together, the findings suggest that at Time 2, the
significant indirect effect of English Morphological Awareness on Malay Lexical
Inference became stronger, and such an indirect effect was achieved through the
joint relationships of the two competencies with English Lexical Inference on one
hand, and with Malay Morphological Awareness on the other hand.

Research question 3: longitudinal cross-linguistic relationships

Research question 3 focuses on the longitudinal, cross-linguistic relationships, more

specifically, how Time 1 English morphological awareness is related to Time 2 Malay
lexical inference. The baseline SEM model included the latent variables of Time 1
English Morphological Awareness and Time 2 Malay Morphological Awareness, and
Time 2 Malay Lexical Inference. In addition, following the practice of some previous
studies that tested longitudinal cross-linguistic transfer (e.g., Luo et al., 2014), we also
included Time 1 Malay Lexical Inference in the model to control for any
autoregressive effect. We hypothesized that Time 2 Malay Lexical Inference would
be predicted by Time 2 Malay Morphological Awareness, Time 1 Malay Lexical
Inference (i.e., the autoregressor), as well as Time 1 English Morphological
Awareness; in addition, Time 1 English Morphological Awareness would predict
Time 1 Malay Lexical Inference and Time 2 Malay Morphological Awareness.
The test of the baseline SEM model showed v2(17) = 42.472, p \ .001, with v2/
df = 2.50, GFI = .930, CFI = .931, SRMR = .070, and RMSEA = .109. In the
baseline model, Time 1 English Morphological Awareness significantly predicted
Time 2 Malay Morphological Awareness (b = .651, p \ .001) and explained about
42.4 % of its variance, suggesting some longitudinal transfer effect at the construct
level. Time 1 English Morphological Awareness also significantly predicted Time 1
Malay Lexical Inference (b = .470, R2 = .221, p \ .001). The three predictors of
Time 2 Malay Lexical Inference explained about 43.5 % of its variance. The
explained variance was largely contributed by Time 2 Malay Morphological

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Awareness, which was the only predictor with a significant and unique effect,
b = .674, p \ .001. Neither of the other two predictors, including Time 1 English
Morphological Awareness (b = -.104, p = .439) and Time 1 Malay Lexical
Inference (b = .133, p = .108), had a significant and unique effect on Time 2
Malay Lexical Inference. A diagram of the baseline model is presented in Fig. 3.
For model modification, we first conducted a Lagrange Multiplier Test, which did
not suggest that adding any path to the baseline model would significantly improve
the model fit. A follow-up Wald Test was then conducted, which suggested that
removing the two non-significant paths from Time 1 Malay Lexical Inference and
Time 1 English Morphological Awareness to Time 2 Malay Lexical Inference would
make the model more parsimonious without significantly affecting the model fit. The
modified model with the two paths removed showed v2(19) = 45.129 (p \ .001), v2/
df = 2.38, GFI = .925, CFI = .927, SRMR = .074, and RMSEA = .104, indicating
that the model fit was overall acceptable. The revised model did not differ
significantly from the baseline model, Dv2 (2) = 2.657, p = .265, and therefore, was
accepted as the final model that represented the longitudinal, cross-linguistic
relationship of English morphological awareness with Malay lexical inference.
In the final model, Time 1 English Morphological Awareness remained as a
significant predictor of Time 1 Malay Lexical Inference (b = .474, R2 = .225) as
well as Time 2 Malay Morphological Awareness (b = .644, R2 = .415) (both
ps \ .001). Time 2 Malay Morphological Awareness was the only predictor of Time

Fig. 3 Baseline model of longitudinal effect of English morphological awareness on Malay lexical
inference. EMA1T1, English Morphological Relatedness (Time 1); EMA2T1, English Affix Choice (real)
(Time 1); EMA3T1, English Affix Choice (pseudo) (Time 1); EMAT1, latent variable of English
Morphological Awareness (Time 1); MMA1T2, Malay Morphological Relatedness (Time 2); MMA2T2,
Malay Affix Choice (real) (Time 2); MMA3T2, Malay Affix Choice (pseudo) (Time 2); MMAT2, latent
variable of Malay Morphological Awareness (Time 2); MLEXT1, Malay Lexical Inference (Time 1);
MLEXT2, Malay Lexical Inference (Time 2)

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2 Malay Lexical Inference, and the effect was significant, b = .655, R2 = .428,
p \ .001. As shown in Fig. 4, Time 1 English Morphological Awareness only had
an indirect effect on Time 2 Malay Lexical Inference through Time 2 Malay
Morphological Awareness; and such an effect was significant, b = .422, p \ .001.

Discussion and conclusions

In this longitudinal study, we examined the concurrent and longitudinal relation-

ships between morphological awareness and bilingual children’s lexical inference
ability, which was defined and measured as the ability to use morphological clues to
infer meanings of unfamiliar words both within and across their two languages. The
study generated some interesting findings about the contribution of morphology to
word learning and cross-linguistic transfer of morphological awareness.

Morphological awareness in word learning

This study found that morphological awareness was a significant predictor of lexical
inference in both English and Malay at both Time 1 and Time 2. In both languages,
Time 1 morphological awareness also significantly predicted Time 2 lexical
inference after controlling for the autoregressive effect or Time 1 lexical inference.

Fig. 4 Final model of longitudinal effect of English morphological awareness on Malay lexical
inference. EMA1T1, English Morphological Relatedness (Time 1); EMA2T1, English Affix Choice (real)
(Time 1); EMA3T1, English Affix Choice (pseudo) (Time 1); EMAT1, latent variable of English
Morphological Awareness (Time 1); MMA1T2, Malay Morphological Relatedness (Time 2); MMA2T2,
Malay Affix Choice (real) (Time 2); MMA3T2, Malay Affix Choice (pseudo) (Time 2); MMAT2, latent
variable of Malay Morphological Awareness (Time 2); MLEXT1, Malay Lexical Inference (Time 1);
MLEXT2, Malay Lexical Inference (Time 2)

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These concurrent as well as longitudinal relationships were not surprising because,

to successfully unlock the meaning of an unknown, morphologically complex word,
learners would need to segment the word into its constituent morphemes and
synthesize the meanings of these morphemes based on their structural relationship
(i.e., an analytical approach to word learning). That is to say, the ability to reflect
upon and manipulate morphemes or morphological awareness is necessitated.
Therefore, it theoretically holds that for whichever language, those who have a
higher level of morphological awareness tend to be more successful in instantaneous
resolution of lexical gaps, and consequently have a larger repertoire of complex
words and better retention of meanings of those complex words in their mental
lexicon (i.e., vocabulary knowledge) (Nagy et al., 2014; Sandra, 1994). The findings
also corroborate those of previous studies that addressed a similar issue across
diverse languages and types of learners (e.g., Bowers & Kirby, 2010; Chen et al.,
2012; MacBride-Chang et al., 2008; McCutchen et al., 2009; Zhang, 2013).
A more significant finding regarding within-language relationships is that in both
English and Malay, morphological awareness was found to explain an increasing
amount of variance in lexical inference from Grade 3 to Grade 4, and Grade 3
morphological awareness also uniquely predicted Grade 4 lexical inference. Such a
finding has not been previously reported in the literature, due to the fact that existing
studies focused only on a single group of learners at one time of development with
no attempt to compare the strengths of relationships across times (e.g., Bowers &
Kirby, 2010; Zhang, 2013; Zhang & Koda, 2012). It suggests that morphology may
have a developmentally greater role in learning of new words. Specifically, as
children progress in their language and literacy learning, their insights into
morphology would develop, and there would be more and deeper morphological
strategies at their disposal to work with unfamiliar words in print, such as more
knowledge of the meanings and functions of affixes, and a stronger representation of
morphemes in the mental lexicon; and subsequently, over time, they would be more
likely to apply morphology-based strategies to unlock meanings of unknown words.
The longitudinal relationship also confirms that a strong earlier foundation in
morphology can be critical to children’s development of vocabulary knowledge.
On the other hand, the accumulation of processing experiences with morpho-
logically complex words in print hypothetically would also strengthen learners’
morphological knowledge and their mental representation of morphological
information (e.g., morpho-phonemics and grapho-morphology). That is to say,
developmentally, lexical inference (and other morpheme-based reading experi-
ences) might also predict the growth of morphological awareness. Given the
purpose of the present study, we did not test such a relationship between
morphological awareness and lexical inference conversely, which is certainly an
interesting issue to explore in future research.

Concurrent and longitudinal transfer of morphological awareness

A critical issue in L2 or biliteracy research is whether L1 metalinguistic awareness,

including morphological awareness, can be transferred to facilitate the development
of L2 reading abilities. Despite increasing attention to such an issue, how exactly L1

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morphological awareness and L2 reading are related has been unclear. In previous
research, transfer of morphological awareness, and that of other skills as well, was
typically tested within a correlation/regression-based methodological framework
where an objective was to identify a unique or direct effect of L1 morphological
awareness on an L2 reading ability over and above L2 morphological awareness
(e.g., Ramirez et al., 2010; Wang et al., 2006; Zhang & Koda, 2014), which leads to
a question as to what exactly that unique effect is.
The Transfer Facilitation Model (Koda, 2005, 2008) argues for a facilitation
effect of L1 metalinguistic awareness transfer on L2 reading development, but does
not seem clear on how exactly L1 metalinguistic awareness and L2 reading sub-
skills are developmentally connected in relation to corresponding L2 metalinguistic
awareness (and L1 reading skills). It seems logical to assume that transferred L1
morphological awareness would facilitate the development of L2 morphological
awareness (together with various L2 experiences, such as instruction), which is
fundamental to L2 reading acquisition. Consequently, a facilitation effect on L2
reading via L2 morphological awareness would be expected. Some preliminary
evidence that supports such a pattern of indirect transfer has been reported in a few
studies that adopted an SEM methodological framework (e.g., Luo et al., 2014;
Zhang, 2013). It was also confirmed in the present study in that concurrently at both
Time 1 and Time 2, English morphological awareness only had a significant,
indirect effect on Malay lexical inference via Malay morphological awareness.
On the other hand, the present study showed that the effect of the concurrent
patterns of cross-linguistic relationships also showed a difference over time. At
Time 2, the indirect cross-linguistic relationship between morphological awareness
and lexical inference was achieved through their joint relationship with both Malay
morphological awareness and English lexical inference, whereas at Time 1, only the
indirect route through Malay morphological awareness was significant. Taken
together, these findings seem to extend our understanding of L1 transfer in L2
reading in that transfer facilitation effect from L1 may also surface at the level of
morpheme-based reading skill in addition to that of morphological awareness (see
Pasquarella, Chen, Gottardo, and Geva, 2015 for an interesting study on transfer of
word reading accuracy and fluency). The finding that the indirect cross-linguistic
effect via English lexical inference was only significant at Time 2, however,
suggests that transfer through L1 reading sub-skill might be more difficult to
happen, and developmentally, it might only emerge after learners have developed a
more refined level of L1 morphological awareness.
In addition to the above analyses of concurrent cross-linguistic relationships, we
also examined the relationships between English morphological awareness and
Malay lexical inference longitudinally. Theoretically, the longitudinal, cross-
linguistic relationship is a critical issue. As noted earlier in this paper, concurrent
cross-linguistic correlational relationships only provide limited insights into transfer
of metalinguistic awareness (Genesee et al., 2006; Geva, 2014). To understand how
L1 transfer indeed facilitates the growth of L2 reading abilities, or a possibly causal
role of L1 metalinguistic awareness in L2 reading development, analysis of any
longitudinal effect of the former skill on the latter seems essential (Deacon & Cain,
2011).

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Developmental evidence of transfer facilitation has been rare, though. Two

notable longitudinal studies employed a similar design as the present study but with
word reading instead of lexical inference as the target reading skill, and they
produced divergent findings. In Deacon et al.’s (2007), for example, a significant,
unique longitudinal effect was found of Grade 2 French morphological awareness
on Grade 3 English word reading; on the other hand, in Luo et al. (2014), neither the
unique/direct nor the indirect effect of Time 1 English compound awareness on
Time 2 Chinese word reading was significant. The present study produced a pattern
of longitudinal transfer of morphological awareness that is convergent with neither
study. We found that Time 1 English morphological awareness did not have any
significant direct contribution to Time 2 Malay lexical inference, after controlling
for Time 2 Malay morphological awareness (and Time 1 Malay lexical inference).
However, its indirect effect was significant through Time 2 Malay morphological
awareness, which seems to confirm the observation made earlier that transferred
effect of L1 morphological awareness on L2 reading may more likely go through
corresponding L2 morphological awareness.
Given the short span of the present study (about half a year), the evidence of and
the observation made on transfer from a developmental perspective are admittedly
preliminary. Longitudinal studies that span a long time are certainly warranted in
the future to help us better understand the mechanism of L1 transfer facilitation
effect on the development of L2 reading skills. It is of particular interest to
investigate, for example, when morpheme-related reading skills like lexical
inference form a cross-linguistic relationship in conjunction with the development
of morphological awareness, and how such a relationship evolves over time.
A few limitations of the present study are noted. The first limitation is related to
children’s proficiency in English and Malay. Given that English is a high-stake
language and English literacy is the primary literacy of students in Singapore, our
cross-linguistic SEM models were tested with hypothetical transfer of morpholog-
ical awareness from English to Malay rather than from Malay to English or in both
directions. However, whether or not transfer takes place, and if so, in which
direction it happens might be sensitive to children’s actual proficiency in their two
languages. In the present study, we did not have data about children’s overall
proficiency in English and Malay, nor did we have the exact patterns of children’s
home language use, which could be very complex, given the ever-changing
sociolinguistic milieu in Singapore. Consequently, even though it might be
reasonable to assume that as a whole group, children’s English proficiency was
higher than that of Malay, given that they had had substantively more instructional
experience in English in school, there might be some children who learned English
as a Second Language in school and whose English proficiency was low and lower
than their Malay proficiency. For those children, transfer from English to Malay
might not necessarily happen due to a threshold of English proficiency that might
exist and would need to be passed for it to happen as implied in Cummins’s (1991)
Linguistic Threshold Hypothesis, or transfer of morphological awareness might
happen from Malay to English.
A second limitation pertains to the meaning inference tasks we used to measure
children’s lexical inference ability. As noted earlier, the target words in the tasks

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were determined based on careful decisions of the research team and teachers who
had expert knowledge of students’ curriculums and bilingual development. We took
great effort to make sure that the tasks tapped lexical inference rather than breadth
of vocabulary knowledge. However, there is a possibility that some children might
have had active knowledge of some words and did not engage in using their
morphological insights when working with those words in the tasks; such a
possibility could only be minimized rather than completely avoided. Using pseudo
words with salient features of derivational suffixation and embedded in meaningful
contexts might help achieve a more stringent control of possible confound of this
kind in future research.
Another limitation is about possible influence of some unmeasured variables on
the identified relationships between morphological awareness and lexical inference
in the present study. As noted in the literature, a plethora of other variables or
‘‘Common Underlying Processes’’ (Geva & Ryan, 1993), such as language aptitude,
working memory, and phonological processing skills, might have an influence on
how L1 and L2 skills are related. Those variables were not considered in the present
study. While we measured nonverbal intelligence, it was not included in our SEM
analyses, as it was not significantly related to the literacy tasks. Consequently, the
actual effect of English morphological awareness on Malay lexical inference might
have been over-estimated in the present study. Finally, compared to that of the
English tasks, the reliability of some Malay tasks appeared low (.632 to .728; see
Table 1). This might be because the English tasks were developed by us with good
references to those established ones in previous studies, whereas there were no
existing tasks for us to refer to when we were developing the Malay tasks. We hope
to refine the Malay tasks in our future research.

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