Why aren't compound words counted as more than one morpheme? The same question applies for derived words. There is ample evidence that young children productively use some derivations (e.g., agentive -er or adjectival -y), as well as produce novel compounds. Why aren't inflections such as comparatives and superlatives counted? Posted by SALT Support Staff Sep 16, 2014
Compound words, derived words, comparatives, and superlatives
This entry was posted on 09/30/2015.
There is a SALT blog titled “Why do we mark some bound morphemes and not others” which you should read. We only mark plurals, possessives, contractions, and inflected verbs as bound morphemes. You may choose, of course, to mark compound words, comparatives, etc. in your own transcripts. What about prefixes? Be careful, however, if you choose to compare your transcript with samples selected from the SALT reference databases.
Posted by SALT Support Staff Sep 16, 2014 and edited on Jan 10, 2019