Grammatical (derivational –compounding) errors in the writing of Greek Dyslexic Children and adolescents

Developmental dyslexia is characterized by limitations in the acquisition of reading and spelling. Phonological deficits (both in reading and writing) constitute one of the most common manifestation of this disorder crosslinguistically. However, the manifestation of this these difficulties is related to the different orthographic systems. Greek is a relatively transparent language in terms of learning to read, but has a very demanding spelling system due to historical-etymological elements; hence, spelling abilities are not only limited to intact phonological abilities, but also to comprehension and application of the different morphological rules. In the current study we present the data of 279 dyslexic children and adolescents on a series of dictated texts (subtest of the Battery for the Assessment of Dyslexia in Greek, Zachos, D. and Zachos, I., 1998) focusing on the category of derivational – compounding demands. The data of the dyslexic children were compared to the data of 1039 children of general school population. The results were analysed quantitatively and can be summarized as follows: 1) The dyslexic groups showed particularly low scores on this category and signifficant differences were found. 2) One sample t-tests with a set value of 50%, revealed (apart from one group) no significant differences from chance level. 3) Also, the performance of one group of dyslexic children was found to be significantly below chance level. The difficulties of the dyslexic children on the specific category are attributable to the demanding rules of Greek spelling system and to dyslexic children’s limitations in the comprehension and application of these rules.