Study title

This dataset includes Dutch secondary school students' responses to a grammar test. A total of 278 students (200 of them were used in the analyses for the paper), from first grade up and to sixth grade, from two educational levels (havo and vwo), were asked to determine the grammatical function of Dutch homophonous verb forms to investigate how well spellers are able to determine the grammatical functions of the relevant verb forms. These verb forms sound identical, but are spelled differently because of their grammatical function.

Students were presented with a sentence with a gap replacing the verb form. Behind this gap, the infinitive of the verb form was given between brackets. The students' task was to indicate the grammatical function of the missing verb form. Students could choose between 'present tense', 'past tense', 'past participle', 'infinitive', 'adjectival past participle', and the option 'don't know'. The experiment was not self-paced; students had exactly ten seconds to read each sentence and to determine the grammatical function of the verb form.

The dataset includes 72 test verbs and 19 filler verbs. Half of the test verbs have third person singular present tenses that are homophonic with the past participles, but are spelled differently. The other half of the test verbs have past tense singulars that are homophonic with the adjectival past participles, but are spelled differently. Each verb occurred in both forms in the experiment.

The dataset belongs to the following paper: Chamalaun, R.J.P.M., Bosman, A.M.T., & Ernestus, M.TC. (2021). The role of grammar in spelling homophonous regular verbs. Written Language & Literacy, 24(1), 38-80.