Why Simple Verb Forms Can Be So Difficult to Spell: The Influence of Homophone Frequency and Distance in Dutch

Two experiments are reported in which the determinants of spelling errors on homophonous verb forms in Dutch were studied. Both experiments indicated that errors were determined by the frequency relationship between the two homophonous forms and the distance between the verb and the word determining its spelling. We propose an interference model for spelling in which a phonologically driven retrieval process is the locus of the frequency effect and a morphosyntactically driven computational component can account for the distance effect. Alternative explanations are also explored.