Developing a Persian version of the Wug Test to assess children’s morphological knowledge

Abstract

Assessing children's linguistic knowledge is essential for understanding the processes underlying language acquisition and development. To this end, Berko (1958) developed the Wug Test, a tool to evaluate English-speaking children's morphological knowledge and to identify potential language impairments. Inspired by this approach, the present study aimed to develop a comparable assessment tool tailored to the Persian language, in order to evaluate morphological knowledge in Persian-speaking children. Due to structural differences between English and Persian, the authors conducted a comprehensive linguistic analysis to generate novel words aligned with Persian morphological rules. Following five iterative rounds of refinement, the final version of the test was administered to 90 children aged five to seven years. The findings indicated significant age-related differences in morphological knowledge, with seven-year-old children outperforming younger participants, thereby demonstrating more advanced acquisition of Persian morphological rules. No significant differences were observed based on gender. These findings demonstrate the developmental trajectory of morphological knowledge in Persian-speaking children and support the adapted Wug Test as a reliable diagnostic tool.