End Of Word Research Articles

Further evidence for self-organization in English spelling

Further evidence for self-organization in English spelling Kristian Berg and Mark Aronoff Geoffrey Sampson (2018) makes two claims in his response to our article about self-organization in spelling (Berg & Aronoff 2017): our explanation is redundant, and the phenomena we address can be better captured in more traditional terms. In our article, we showed first that the relation between graphemic form and morphological function is isomorphic for some suffixes, for example, the adjectival suffix -ous: in today’s English, all and only adjectives with this morpheme are spelled with final <ous>, even though phonographically, more words could be spelled that way in American varieties (cf. nervous/service). We also demonstrated that this system evolved gradually in an unsupervised process of self-organization. Sampson does not contest our synchronic statement, but brings forth a variety of distinct accounts for our diachronic findings. Overall, he suggests that phonology and etymology are sufficient to explain why the spellings are the way they are: in British English, nervous and service have (and more importantly, had) distinct reduced vowels. The distinct spelling is thus explicable from phonology here. Other spellings, Sampson argues, follow a widespread convention preferring etymological spellings: service has an <i> in Latin, and <ous> stems from Latin -os-; that is why *<servous> is not the accepted form. No need for a distinct principle of self-organization, says Sampson, because all the data are accounted for already. There are three misunderstandings in Sampson’s response. We take responsibility for the first, though not for the second and third. Let us start with the first. Synchronically, we showed that graphemic form and morphological function are isomorphic. We then ask how this situation arose historically, but the fact is that we looked at only half of the historical story. To show this, we need to step back a little and look at the relation between form and function. It is fine to talk about isomorphism as above—but it can be helpful to take the relation apart: we can distinguish between uniformity and uniqueness. Uniformity denotes the degree of consistency with which a function is represented in its form: is there more than one spelling for the suffix? Today, -ous is spelled (almost) uniformly <ous>,1 but in earlier stages of English, there were variants (e.g. <us>, <ouse>), so we can say that the spelling of this adjective suffix has become more uniform over the centuries. Uniqueness flips the perspective; it denotes the degree of consistency with which a form represents a function. Is there more than one interpretation for this string of graphemes? While <ous> is unique in representing this one adjective suffix, other suffix spellings are not; <er> represents (among others) the agentive nominal suffix in <singer> and the comparative suffix in <longer>, but also a nonmorphological word ending in <hammer>. Both uniformity and uniqueness are independent of phonology: they deal with the relation between spelling and morphology. When we take phonology into account, it is as circumstantial evidence: the fact that a number of words in today’s American English could potentially be spelled with <ous> (e.g. service) is a further argument for the uniqueness. [End Page e48] Synchronically, we showed that -ous/<ous> is both unique and uniform—but diachronically, we investigated only the uniformity of the suffix. We asked whether Latinate loans like status were responsible for the decline of the <us>-variant of -ous like <humerus> (short answer: probably not)—that is a question of uniqueness. But we did not investigate the uniqueness of each spelling variant in each time period, simply because the investigation was extensive enough already. That does not mean the question is uninteresting. A superficial search in the Helsinki corpus (a selection of English texts produced before 1710) indeed shows a number of words whose endings are like variant spellings of the suffix -ous (<ous>, <ouse>), but that did not contain the suffix, for example, <almous dedes> ‘alms’, <felouse> ‘fellows’, <alehous> ‘alehouse’, or <sparous> ‘sparrows’. It remains an open question how unique the respective spellings were at any given time. We now have data that show a striking case of the emergence of uniqueness over time in the spelling of the nominal...

An Unknown Correlation in Hexametric Poetry and the Interpretation of the Brevis in Longo Principle

The goal of this paper is to show that (some) Ancient Greek hexametric poets were not indifferent to the quantity of the final syllable of the verse, by studying the correlation between that quantity and the different possible word ends in the fourth foot of the verse. The results of the study suggest that in some poets there was a certain preference for “rhythmic coherence” within the second colon, which indicates that, even if there was “compositional indifference” regarding the quantity of the last syllable, there was not “actual indifference”.

Invented Spelling, Word Stress, and Syllable Awareness in Relation to Reading Difficulties in Children.

The study assessed the clinical utility of an invented spelling tool and determined whether invented spelling with linguistic manipulation at segmental and supra-segmental levels can be used to better identify reading difficulties. We conducted linguistic manipulation by using real and nonreal words, incorporating word stress, alternating the order of consonants and vowels, and alternating the number of syllables. We recruited 60 third-grade students, of which half were typical readers and half were poor readers. The invented spelling task consistently differentiated those with reading difficulties from typical readers. It explained unique variance in conventional spelling, but not in word reading. Word stress explained unique variance in both word reading and conventional spelling, highlighting the importance of addressing phonological awareness at the supra-segmental level. Poor readers had poorer performance when spelling both real and nonreal words and demonstrated substantial difficulty in detecting word stress. Poor readers struggled with spelling words with double consonants at the beginning and ending of words, and performed worse on spelling two- and three-syllable words than typical readers. Practical implications for early identification and instruction are discussed.

The Function of Final w in Nouns and Adjectives in the Autography of Selected Late Egyptian Texts

Summary Late Egyptian texts are often characterized by the presence of a w at the end of words that does not seem to have any etymological justification. This w has often been interpreted as a “space filler”, i.e. a sign without any real function used by the scribe to fill spaces in the text. In the present article I question this hypothesis, and I suggest instead that these w were used to supply some information about the vocalization of the word, as sort of very primitive matres lectionis. Starting from the analysis of nouns and adjectives from a corpus of selected Late Egyptian texts, my study shows that there is a correlation between the presence or absence of the w in late Egyptian words and the vocalization in the corresponding Coptic reflexes. Possible further research and some considerations about the larger implications of this system are presented in the conclusions.

구어에서 운율 표지와 형태 표지의 분포와 기능

This paper aims at investigating the prosodic markers and morphological markers in spoken Korean. Prosody, especially intonation, has linguistic and paralinguistic meanings in spoken Korean. As is well-known, prosody plays important role in spoken language: it is hard to determine whether a word(or a eojeol) is realized at the sentence final or non-final position without consulting the prosody. Only an exception is that a word(or eojeol) ends with a typical sentence final ending such as ‘–다, -냐, -라, -자’. Therefore, we can categorize two types of endings in Korean: clause terminal endings and sentence terminal endings. A eojeol with a clause terminal ending, which is categorized as a connective ending in the previous studies, terminates a sentence only with a terminal boundary tone. It does not terminates a sentence with a non-terminal boundary tone. On the other hand, a eojeol with a sentence terminal ending, which is categorized as a terminal ending in the previous studies, always terminates a sentence with a unmarked terminal boundary tone. The unmarked terminal boundary tone depends on the ending types: H% for the interrogative ending (e.g. {-냐), L% for the rests. Marked terminal boundary tone with sentence terminal ending only changes paralinguistic modal meaning of the sentence. It does not change the linguistic category of the sentence type, which is realized with the morphological marker(i.e. sentence terminal ending type). Only paralinguistic modal meaning changes in this case. On the other hand, when a eojeol does not end with a sentence terminal ending, a sentence can close off with terminal boundary tone and cannot close off with non-terminal boundary tone. In this case, terminal boundary tone can have linguistic meaning as well as paralinguistic modal meaning.

Tone-grammar association within words: Concurrent ERP and fMRI show rapid neural pre-activation and involvement of left inferior frontal gyrus in pseudoword processing

Using a concurrent ERP/fMRI paradigm, we investigated how listeners take advantage of morphologically relevant tonal information at the beginning of words to predict and pre-activate likely word endings. More predictive, low tone word stems gave rise to a ‘pre-activation negativity’ (PrAN) in the ERPs, a brain potential which has previously been found to increase along with the degree of predictive certainty as regards how a word is going to end. It is suggested that more predictive, low tone stems lead to rapid access to word endings with processing subserved by the left primary auditory cortex as well as the supramarginal gyrus, while high tone stems – which are less predictive – decrease predictive certainty, leading to increased competition between activated word endings, which needs to be resolved by the left inferior frontal gyrus.

SEGMENTAL DAN SUPRA SEGMENTAL DALAM KIDUNG MALAT COWAK DI DESA PADANGBULIA

&lt;em&gt;Malat Cowak a traditional literary works shaped hymn often sing Padangbulia society. This kidung serves as a companion religious ceremonie’s such as, pitra yadnya and manusia yadnya. But when song, chants significant they can only be interpreted by readers based on the dictionary meaning only. As an active reader, a work of literature, especially the kidung, various kinds of theories and methods in the process of interpretation of the meaning. One way is to analyze the sound system that ties each end of words in one verse. Study of the sound system in linguistics is based on the study of phonology. Science that examines the sound system can be done with two analysis: analysis of segmental and suprasegmental.&lt;/em&gt;

Forehearing words: Pre-activation of word endings at word onset.

Occurring at rates up to 6-7 syllables per second, speech perception and understanding involves rapid identification of speech sounds and pre-activation of morphemes and words. Using event-related potentials (ERPs) and functional magnetic resonance imaging (fMRI), we investigated the time-course and neural sources of pre-activation of word endings as participants heard the beginning of unfolding words. ERPs showed a pre-activation negativity (PrAN) for word beginnings (first two segmental phonemes) with few possible completions. PrAN increased gradually as the number of possible completions of word onsets decreased and the lexical frequency of the completions increased. The early brain potential effect for few possible word completions was associated with a blood-oxygen-level-dependent (BOLD) contrast increase in Broca's area (pars opercularis of the left inferior frontal gyrus) and angular gyrus of the left parietal lobe. We suggest early involvement of the left prefrontal cortex in inhibiting irrelevant left parietal activation during lexical selection. The results further our understanding of the importance of Broca's area in rapid online pre-activation of words.

تحليل الأخطاء الكتابية الإملائية في تعليمات المنتجات الإندونيسية

This article describes errors of writing found in ingredients of Indonesian products which are written in Arabic, for example ingredients of foods or snacks based on imla’ and non-imla’ perspective. After doing depth analysis of errors in ingredients writing, it is found that there are some errors. From Imla’ perspective, the errors are: (1) the placement of hamzah in the beginning, in the middle, and in the end of words. (2) hamzah qatha’ and hamzah washal (3) punctuations such as comma [,] full stop [.], and etc. Furthermore, based on non-imla’ perspective, the errors are: (1) the change of letter is caused by equality of sound so that it is heared the same writing, (2) another errors happen because of addition of letter in certain words which result other words that are different from Arabic dictionary, (3) The last, the errors resulted from reduction of some letter(s) in certain words in which it is literally different from dictionary meaning and do not follow the correct rule of Arabic writing.

Lexical representation and processing of word-initial morphological alternations: Scottish Gaelic mutation

When hearing speech, listeners begin recognizing words before reaching the end of the word. Therefore, early sounds impact spoken word recognition before sounds later in the word. In languages like English, most morphophonological alternations affect the ends of words, but in some languages, morphophonology can alter the early sounds of a word. Scottish Gaelic, an endangered language, has a pattern of ‘initial consonant mutation’ that changes initial consonants: Pog ‘kiss’ begins with [ph], but phog ‘kissed’ begins with [f]. This raises questions both of how listeners process words that might begin with a mutated consonant during spoken word recognition, and how listeners relate the mutated and unmutated forms to each other in the lexicon. We present three experiments to investigate these questions. A priming experiment shows that native speakers link the mutated and unmutated forms in the lexicon. A gating experiment shows that Gaelic listeners usually do not consider mutated forms as candidates during lexical recognition until there is enough evidence to force that interpretation. However, a phonetic identification experiment confirms that listeners can identify the mutated sounds correctly. Together, these experiments contribute to our understanding of how speakers represent and process a language with morphophonological alternations at word onset.

Editorial

Editorial Edward Finegan (bio) FOR THE FIRST TIME SINCE ITS INITIAL APPEARANCE IN 1979, Dictionaries is published here in a second issue of its annual volume. That’s a notable advance for the journal, and other changes are under discussion. Still, the core values, functions, and structure of the journal remain steady, and you’ll find articles, book reviews, and reports of reference works in progress here, as usual. While the value of older dictionaries in tracing the semantic evolution of words is well known, their usefulness in aid of phonological evolution is less so. In an article highlighting the utility of eighteenth-century dictionaries and orthoepic treatises in tracing the history of particular sounds, Nicolas Trapateau explores the complex history of unstressed vowels in English words. Relying on a digitized copy of John Walker’s 1791 Pronouncing Dictionary and on other contemporary works, he notes that eighteenth-century pronunciations of unstressed syllables (with a focus on the five common word endings -al, -age, -ile, and -or and -er) were influenced by spelling and “subject to severe sociolinguistic pressures.” To compensate for information typically lacking in the prefaces of earlier dictionaries and to “give access to a real phonological vision—to pronunciation as a system at a given time in history,” Trapateau demonstrates how exploitation of digitized dictionaries will be of great help. In a proposal especially useful at a time when digital lexicography continues to evolve, Danko Šipka argues that two kinds of specialized subject-matter labels should be systematically incorporated into underlying lexicographic databases. Already commonly deployed are exodistinctive labels, which mark lexemes (or senses) restricted to a particular field (as with hypotension and ventricular fibrillation in medicine and strike in baseball). By contrast, not commonly or systematically [End Page vii] applied are the more encompassing endoprofiling labels, which mark lexemes and senses characteristic of a subject-matter field but not limited to that field and perhaps also part of the general vocabulary (as with blood pressure, hypotension, and ball). Items marked by an exodistinctive label would constitute a subset of those marked with the same endoprofiling label, and the latter would exist solely in the underlying database structure, not in the visible dictionary entry. Not every dictionary would need both label types, but at a time when unanticipated uses are being made of lexicographic databases and when NLP and certain instructional purposes have need of endoprofiling labels, their more systematic deployment and better access through effective user interfaces would be of significant utility. In the Reference Works in Progress section, Lynda Mugglestone describes a project to digitize and annotate the extensive notebooks and other unpublished writings of Andrew Clark from the period 1914 to 1919. Her report describes and illustrates the kinds of linguistic and cultural insights contained in the Words in War-Time materials, as well as Clark’s contributions to, and comments about, the OED. Mugglestone concludes that, “vested in Clark’s committed industry and his dedication to lexicography as a form of living, and highly liberal, history,” Words in War-Time can “provide a robust—and fascinating—rebuttal” to stereotypes, both popular and scholarly, about language in WWI. In another Reference Works in Progress report, David-Antoine Williams describes a project to annotate the background coded text of the OED with metadata identifying various features of the more than 2.4 million quotations in OED2 that are not now systematically accessible through the dictionary’s Web interface. These features include the gender of quoted authors, the genre of the text from which a quotation comes, and the edition of the dictionary in which a quotation first appears, all matters about which scholars have sought systematic information. Still other features valuable in meeting scholarly interests are under development in the project. In the reviews section, Antonette dePaolo Healey, who co-authored an article in the very first issue of the journal, gives her appraisal of The Oxford Handbook of Lexicography. She says that editor Philip Durkin’s collection “will become the authoritative standard by which all handbooks of lexicography are judged” and that its “insights are so rich and [End Page viii] deep that students, scholars, and practitioners at every level will find something of...

The processing of gender assignment in Spanish

This paper reports on an experiment investigating the processing of accurate gender assignment in canonical and non-canonical inanimate nouns in Spanish by native speakers of Basque with nativelike proficiency in Spanish. 33 Basque/Spanish bilinguals and 32 native speakers of Spanish completed an online and an offline gender assignment task. Participants assigned gender to inanimate nouns with canonical (-o; -a) and non-canonical word endings (-e; consonants). The results revealed that the Basque/Spanish bilingual group obtained high accuracy scores in both tasks, similar to the Spanish native speaker group. Interestingly, unlike the Spanish group, the Basque speakers showed faster reaction times with feminine nouns than masculine ones. Canonicity seems to be a strong cue for both groups, since all participants were more accurate and faster with canonical word endings. Even though quantitatively Basque/Spanish bilinguals and Spanish monolinguals’ gender assignment accuracy rates do not differ, qualitatively, the Basque/Spanish bilinguals’ assignment patterns seem to differ somewhat from those of the native Spanish speakers.

Dois fenômenos de supressão de segmentos em limite da palavra

Abstract: This work present an analysis of two phonologícal phenomena. ofportuguese, connected with the disappearance of segments at the endof words: vowel deletion between consonants at the end of the word,as in saudades, pronounced [saw'dads];and the deletion of somesyllables in word boundary as in 'script' phonetically ]'leyji'koku].Here we intend to give a contribution to the study of word boundaryphenomena, a subject not well known in portuguese phonology.

Q2Stress: A database for multiple cues to stress assignment in Italian.

In languages where the position of lexical stress within a word is not predictable from print, readers rely on distributional information extracted from the lexicon in order to assign stress. Lexical databases are thus especially important for researchers willing to address stress assignment in those languages. Here we present Q2Stress, a new database aimed to fill the lack of such a resource for Italian. Q2Stress includes multiple cues readers may use in assigning stress, such as type and token frequency of stress patterns as well as their distribution with respect to number of syllables, grammatical category, word beginnings, word endings, and consonant-vowel structures. Furthermore, for the first time, data for both adults and children are available. Q2Stress may help researchers to answer empirical as well as theoretical questions about stress assignment and stress-related issues, and more in general, to explore the orthography-to-phonology relation in reading. Q2Stress is designed as a user-friendly resource, as it comes with scripts allowing researchers to explore and select their own stimuli according to several criteria as well as summary tables for overall data analysis.

PEMEROLEHAN BAHASA ANAK: KAJIAN ASPEK FONOLOGI PADA ANAK USIA 2 - 2,5 TAHUN

This article aims to explain child language acquisition 2--2.5 years of age phonological aspects which include the acquisition of vowels, consonants, and factors affecting the phonological acquisition. The research was conducted in Jakarta from August 2011 through February 2012 .The method used in this research was qualitative method with case study approach. Sources of data were obtained from TPM and these data were collected during six months of observation, diaries, and interviews. The findings in this article shows that TPM has mastered the phoneme [a], [i], [u], [e], [o], [∂], [є], and [Ο]. Vowel phonemes was mastered at the age of 2 years and 1 month. The first vowel that it controls is a vowel [a], [i] and [u], then the front vowel [i], [e], [ε], and then back vowel [u], [o], [ כ], and vowel [∂], [a]. Double vowel sound that is not a diphthong also been mastered by the age of 2 years and 3 months, for example, [au], [ai] and [ue]. However, the original diphthong [au] and [ai] recently mastered at age 2 years and 6 months. Meanwhile, the consonant [p], [b], [t], [d], [s], [h], [c], [j], [m], [n], [ŋ], [l ], [w] and [y] mastered well. Consonant [t], [s], [c], [j] and [ŋ] has appeared, but still fluctuates with another sound. The sound resistor velar [g] and [k] are not pronounced properly. The sound [k] is mastered if located in the middle and end of words. Sound fricative [f] and [v] and trill [r] has not yet emerged and mastered. TPM perform substitution pattern to pronounce phonemes had not conquered, such as phonemes [f], [v], [z], and [x]. The appearance of a wide range of variation in her phonological acquisition largely is caused by the incomplete of her speech organ. Research is still open for further research the acquisition of phonology because language acquisition TPM has yet to reach the Summit. But it can also examine language acquisition on aspects of other languages.

Information Distribution Within Musical Segments

In research on word recognition, it has been shown that word beginnings have higher information content for word identification than word endings; this asymmetric information distribution within words has been argued to be due to the communicative pressure to allow words in speech to be recognized as early as possible. Through entropy analysis using two representative datasets from Wikifonia and the Essen folksong corpus, we show that musical segments also have higher information content (i.e., higher entropy) in segment beginnings than endings. Nevertheless, this asymmetry was not as dramatic as that found within words, and the highest information content was observed in the middle of the segments (i.e., an inverted U pattern). This effect may be because the first and last notes of a musical segment tend to be tonally stable, with more flexibility in the first note for providing the initial context. The asymmetric information distribution within words has been shown to be an important factor accounting for various asymmetric effects in word reading, such as the left-biased preferred viewing location and optimal viewing position effects. Similarly, the asymmetric information distribution within musical segments is a potential factor that can modulate music reading behavior and should not be overlooked.

Silex: A database for silent-letter endings in French words.

Silent-letter endings are often claimed to be a major source of inconsistency in the French orthography. In this report, we introduce Silex, a database designed to facilitate the study of spelling performance in general, and silent-letter endings in particular. It was derived from two large and recent corpora based on child- and adult-targeted material. Silex consists of three kinds of Excel workbooks: a set of Stimuli Selector workbooks that allow researchers to select words based on a variety of statistics and word characteristics; a Table Generator workbook that allows researchers to build consistency distribution tables by selecting specific phonological or orthographic units; and a Master File workbook, from which all statistics were derived, and that allows researchers to compute other statistics. Silex is different from existing databases in the manner that silent-letter endings were coded and how consistency indices were computed. Importantly, Silex provides unconditional- and conditional-consistency indices for silent-letter endings. To demonstrate the utility of Silex, we first described the silent-letter phenomenon in French. We found that, at minimum, 28% of French words end with a silent letter. Moreover, silent-letter endings are usually t, e, s, x, or d, and the occurrence of these letters is conditioned by the phonological ending of words. Second, we showed how Silex could prove useful for the development of theoretical models and for empirical studies. The novel information provided in Silex as well as the flexibility of this database should enable researchers to advance our understanding of developing and skilled spelling performance.

Predictive coding accelerates word recognition and learning in the early stages of language development.

The ability to predict future events in the environment and learn from them is a fundamental component of adaptive behavior across species. Here we propose that inferring predictions facilitates speech processing and word learning in the early stages of language development. Twelve- and 24-month olds' electrophysiological brain responses to heard syllables are faster and more robust when the preceding word context predicts the ending of a familiar word. For unfamiliar, novel word forms, however, word-expectancy violation generates a prediction error response, the strength of which significantly correlates with children's vocabulary scores at 12 months. These results suggest that predictive coding may accelerate word recognition and support early learning of novel words, including not only the learning of heard word forms but also their mapping to meanings. Prediction error may mediate learning via attention, since infants' attention allocation to the entire learning situation in natural environments could account for the link between prediction error and the understanding of word meanings. On the whole, the present results on predictive coding support the view that principles of brain function reported across domains in humans and non-human animals apply to language and its development in the infant brain. A video abstract of this article can be viewed at: http://hy.fi/unitube/video/e1cbb495-41d8-462e-8660-0864a1abd02c. [Correction added on 27 January 2017, after first online publication: The video abstract link was added.].

Online perception of coda glottalization in American English

In American English, voiceless codas /t, p/ are often realized with glottalization on the preceding vowel. Previous claims suggest that such glottalization can serve to enhance /t/ or, more generally, voicelessness of coda stops. This study examines the timecourse of word recognition to test these claims. 40 American English listeners participated in an eye-tracking study, where they heard synthesized glottalized and non-glottalized versions of CVC English words ending in /p, t, b, d/ while looking at a display with two words presented orthographically. Target words were presented with a minimal pair differing in place of articulation (e.g., cop-cot), or voicing (e.g., bat-bad, cap-cab). Our results indicate that listeners fixated to target words ending in /t/ marginally faster when they heard the glottalized version and when the competitor presented was a word ending in /p/. Glottalization did not result in faster fixation to targets for words ending in /p/. We also found a strong inhibitory effect—lower...

Tviterasi, tviteraši or twitteraši? Producing and analysing a normalised dataset of Croatian and Serbian tweets

In this paper we discuss the parallel manual normalisation of samples extracted from Croatian and Serbian Twitter corpora. We describe the datasets, outline the unified guidelines provided to annotators, and present a series of analyses of standard-to-non-standard transformations found in the Twitter data. The results show that closed part-of-speech classes are transformed more frequently than the open classes, that the most frequently transformed lemmas are auxiliary and modal verbs, interjections, particles and pronouns, that character deletions are more frequent than insertions and replacements, and that more transformations occur at the word end than in other positions. Croatian and Serbian are found to share many, but not all transformation patterns; while some of the discrepancies can be ascribed to the structural differences between the two languages, others appear to be better explained by looking at extralinguistic factors. The produced datasets and their initial analyses can be used for studying the properties of non-standard language, as well as for developing language technologies for non-standard data.