The uniquery of knowance

Words are often made up of small meaningful parts, such as sweet+ness or kind+ness. These small parts are called morphemes, and many studies have shown that they help people read new words (also called nonwords). Indeed, readers tend to read nonwords containing morphemes more quickly and accurately compared to nonwords without morphemes. However, most studies have examined nonwords presented one at a time, although in everyday life readers normally read words in sentences. This thesis examines how morphemes influence the reading of nonwords both in isolation and in sentences. It also explores two other linguistic factors: how easy it is to interpret the meaning of the nonword (semantic interpretability) and whether the morphemes in the nonword follow the regular combinatorial rules (syntactic legality). To answer these questions, the experiments in the thesis use several techniques. Healthy readers are asked to decide whether the nonwords they see are real English words or not, to read them aloud, and also to read them silently while brain activity is recorded. In addition, people with acquired reading difficulties caused by brain lesions read aloud the nonwords. Their performance provides insights into the strategies they use to overcome their difficulties. The findings offer new evidence on how readers use morphemes, meaning, and combinatorial rules when processing nonwords. Based on these results and previous studies, the thesis proposes a flowchart that summarises the main steps involved in reading. This model aims to give a clear picture of how different linguistic factors support the reading process.