Article published in:
Linguistics in the Netherlands 2018
Edited by Bert Le Bruyn and Janine Berns
[Linguistics in the Netherlands 35] 2018
► pp. 111–124

The Dutch verb-spelling paradox in social media

A corpus study

| Radboud University
| Radboud University
| Radboud University
Although the Dutch verb spelling system seems very straightforward, many spelling errors are made, both by children and adults (e.g., Sandra, Frisson, & Daems 2004). These errors mainly occur with verbs with two or more homophonous forms in their inflectional paradigms. Ample experimental research has been carried out on this topic, but these studies hardly reflect everyday language behavior. In the current corpus study, we reassessed previously found experimental results, but now in a Twitter corpus containing 17,432 tweets with homophonous verb forms. In accordance with previous results, we found a clear preference for the suffix -<d> compared to both -<dt> and -<t> , as well as a frequency effect, resulting in fewer errors for more frequent word forms. Furthermore, the results revealed that users with more followers make fewer errors, and that more errors are made during the evening and night.
Keywords: verb spelling errors, homophones, frequency effect, mental lexicon, everyday language behavior
Published online: 03 December 2018
https://doi.org/10.1075/avt.00008.sch
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Cited by 3 other publications

Gahl, Susanne & Ingo Plag
2019. Spelling errors in English derivational suffixes reflect morphological boundary strength. The Mental Lexicon 14:1 ► pp. 1 ff. Crossref logo
Rey, Arnaud, Jean-Luc Manguin, Chloé Olivier, Sébastien Pacton, Pierre Courrieu & Francesca Peressotti
2019. Spelling performance on the web and in the lab. PLOS ONE 14:12 ► pp. e0226647 ff. Crossref logo
Surkyn, Hanne, Reinhild Vandekerckhove & Dominiek Sandra
2020. From experiment to real-life data. The Mental Lexicon 15:3 ► pp. 422 ff. Crossref logo

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