Phonological Transparency Research Articles

The development of linguistic stimuli for the Swedish Situated Phoneme test

AbstractThe speech perception ability of people with hearing loss can be efficiently measured using phonemic-level scoring. We aimed to develop linguistic stimuli suitable for a closed-set phonemic discrimination test in the Swedish language called the Situated Phoneme (SiP) test. The SiP test stimuli that we developed consisted of real monosyllabic words with minimal phonemic contrast, realised by phonetically similar phones. The lexical and sublexical factors of word frequency, phonological neighbourhood density, phonotactic probability, and orthographic transparency were similar between all contrasting words. Each test word was recorded five times by two different speakers, including one male and one female. The accuracy of the test-word recordings was evaluated by 28 normal-hearing subjects in a listening experiment with a silent background using a closed-set design. With a few exceptions, all test words could be correctly discriminated. We discuss the results in terms of content- and construct-validity implications for the Swedish SiP test.

The development of preverbs in Northern East Cree: A longitudinal case study.

This study is based on naturalistic speech samples produced by one child learning Cree as her first language (2;01-4;03) and presents the first investigation into the development of preverbs in the language. Preverbs are an optional class of morpheme which precede the lexical verb stem, dividing into grammatical, lexical and directional (deictic) subclasses. Of nine preverb types in the child's inventory, 47/48 tokens are grammatical. We argue that these appear early because they exhibit phonological transparency (do not alternate in form) and positional predictability (are restricted to preverb position). Lexical and directional preverbs, however, alternate in form and may appear in either preverb position or within the lexical stem. Furthermore, the child first began to use preverbs with the grammatically simpler independent (default) inflection (2;04), and 7 months later with the more syntactically restrictive conjunct inflection (2;11). She also used each preverb with one inflection type only, even where a choice of inflections was available, and she never produced more than one preverb per verb complex although multiple preverbs are common. In sum, grammatical complexity appears to be a driving factor in determining the child's development pattern.

‘An English Monstrosity’? Evolution and Reception of Manx Orthography

Abstract This article evaluates perceptions of Manx orthography within Celtic scholarship. The predominant view is well summarized by Jackson (1955: 108): ‘Manx orthography is an English monstrosity which obscures both pronunciation and etymology’. Similarly, O’Rahilly dismisses Manx spelling as ‘an abominable system, neither historic nor phonetic, and based mainly on English’ (O’Rahilly 1932: 20). The article sets these perceptions in the sociohistorical context in which the system was developed by the Manx clergy in the seventeenth and eighteenth centuries. It is argued that the system is neither so directly dependent on English conventions, nor so unsystematic and inconsistent, as has been often claimed. Such weaknesses as do exist from the perspective of contemporary scholars and students of the language should not necessarily be viewed as such in the light of the needs, priorities and assumptions of those who practised Manx writing in its original context. It is shown that there was in fact an increase in the phonological transparency of certain elements of the system during the standardization of the mid-eighteenth century represented by the publication of translations of the Book of Common Prayer (1765) and the Bible (1771-72). On the other hand, countervailing pressures towards phonological ambiguity, iconicity and idiosyncrasy are discussed, including the utility of distinguishing homophones; real or presumed etymologies; the influence of non-standard or regional English spelling conventions; tensions between Manx and English norms; and an apparent preference in certain cases for more ambiguous spellings as a compromise between variant forms. Negative outcomes of the received view for scholarship on Manx are also examined, with a case study of the neglect of orthographic evidence for the historical phonology of the language. The wider context of English-based orthographies for Gaelic is also briefly considered.

Morpho-Orthographic Complexity in Affix Spelling in Hebrew: A Novel Psycholinguistic Outlook Across the School Years.

The current study examined the factors underlying native Hebrew speakers’ ability to learn homophonous affix spelling. It takes a novel view in investigating the effect of morpho-orthographic complexity of affix representation on the development of affix spelling across the school years. The role of five morpho-orthographic principles in homophonous affix letter spelling was studied: (i) morpho-orthographic transparency; (ii) affix letter prevalence; (iii) morpho-phonological competition; (iv) overtness of the phonological-orthographic link; and (v) phono-morpho-orthographic consistency. Taken together, these five principles of affix spelling constitute complexity metrics that pinpoint the loci of spelling challenge in homophonous Hebrew affixes. Study participants were 83 monolingual Hebrew-speaking students in four grade levels – 2nd, 4th, 7th, and 10th grades. The research instrument was a spelling task of 244 words containing affix letters in 57 morphological categories. The affixes appearing in the target words represented 56 different affix categories, covering all non-root morphological roles, both inflectional and derivational. While correct spelling increased across grade levels, a hierarchy emerged in interaction with grade level regarding these criteria: Younger spellers were mostly assisted by morpho-orthographic sites, morphological category frequency, and phonological transparency – while spelling in higher grade levels was more affected by morpho-orthographic prevalence. Thus, knowledge of how morphological roles are deployed in the orthography emerges as the most significant factor that affects learning to spell affix letters in Hebrew.

Reading Proficiency and Adaptability in Orthographic Processing: An Examination of the Effect of Type of Orthography Read on Brain Activity in Regular and Dyslexic Readers

Regular readers were found to adjust the routine of reading to the demands of processing imposed by different orthographies. Dyslexic readers may lack such adaptability in reading. This hypothesis was tested among readers of Hebrew, as Hebrew has two forms of script differing in phonological transparency. Event-related potentials were recorded from 24 regular and 24 dyslexic readers while they carried out a lexical decision task in these two forms of script. The two forms of script elicited distinct amplitudes and latencies at ∼165 ms after target onset, and these effects were larger in regular than in dyslexic readers. These early effects appeared not to be merely a result of the visual difference between the two forms of script (the presence of diacritics). The next effect of form of script was obtained on amplitudes elicited at latencies associated with orthographic-lexical processing and the categorization of stimuli, and these appeared earlier in regular readers (∼340 ms) than in dyslexic readers (∼400 ms). The behavioral measures showed inferior reading skills of dyslexic readers compared to regular readers in reading of both forms of script. Taken together, the results suggest that although dyslexic readers are not indifferent to the type of orthography read, they fail to adjust the routine of reading to the demands of processing imposed by both a transparent and an opaque orthography.

Mesure de la productivité morphologique des créoles : au-delà des méthodes quantitatives

AbstractMost recent measures of morphological productivity are reliable only if they are based on a large corpus of the language. This article presents a detailed demonstration of a method for establishing an inventory of productive affixes in a language for which a large corpus is not available. This method evaluates the productivity of an affix first and foremost on the basis of its threshold of profitability (the number of different words derived via the affix) in correlation with other diagnostics to bolster reliability. These other diagnostics are the semantic and phonological transparency of derived words and the decomposability of such words. The application of the method is illustrated step-by-step with data from St. Lucian.

From proper name to primary interjection

This paper is concerned with interjections that have evolved from nouns. Looking at a subclass of interjections, so-called expletives like gee!, jeeze!, gosh!, crikey!, it will be shown how primary interjections regularly evolve from religious names (here Jesus, God, Christ) via secondary interjections (Jesus!, God!, Christ!). Four stages can be distinguished: I proper name Jesus II secondary interjection Jesus! III phonological modification of Jesus! IV primary interjection gee! The “standard” model for subjectification in grammaticalization, Traugott and Dasher’s Invited Inferencing Theory of Semantic Change (2002), which focuses on the speaker as initiator of change, suffices to explain the gradual process through which the secondary interjection Jesus! has evolved through the repeated use of Jesus in invocations, oaths and prayers. Moreover it is claimed that the syntactic position of Jesus in these uses — sentence-initial and separated from the rest of the sentence — played a crucial role in the emergence of the interjection. Invited inferencing, however, fails to explain the emergence of gee!. It will be shown with corpus data that gee! emerged rather abruptly. The meaning of gee! is different from the meaning of Jesus! from its very beginning, and — in contrast to the process through which the secondary interjection Jesus! emerged — there are no transitional stages attested where both the meaning of Jesus! and the meaning of gee! can be inferred. It will be argued that this change was hearer-based and that semantic stability and relationships between words are determined by aspects of phonological transparency. As a result of the clipping of Jesus! (speakers did not want to “take the name of the Lord in vain”), which yielded gee!, the semantic base of gee! became phonologically obscured. Accordingly the hearer had to infer the meaning of gee! from the context of its occurrence alone — consequently gee! differed in meaning from Jesus! straightaway. The OED will be used as a corpus for the diachronic study (cf. Fischer 1992 and Hoffmann 2004 for a discussion of how the OED can be used as a historical corpus). The synchronic use of the forms discussed will be illustrated with examples from the British National Corpus and from the GoogleGroups newsgroups (cf. Bergh 2005 for a discussion of whether and how the Internet can be used as corpus).

Vivian Cook and Benedetta Bassetti (eds): Second Language Writing Systems. Multilingual Matters, 2005.

In a world where literacy in a second language holds the promise of prosperity for many individuals and communities, research into Second Language Writing Systems (L2WS) has undeniable significance. This volume brings together new contributions, in the form of research reports and theoretical discussions, to a field that has so far been characterized by sporadic and rare appearances in publications dedicated to disciplines such as psycholinguistics and neuroscience or broader issues such as bilingualism. This makes the volume an original and welcome addition to SLA and a valuable reference point for those interested in writing systems, biliteracy, and second and foreign language teaching. In Chapter 1, the editors present a critical introduction to and a comprehensive review of cross-linguistic writing systems and L2WS research. They offer definitions of the fundamental terms ‘writing system’, ‘script’, and ‘orthography’, and introduce parameters for classifying writing systems such as the sound- vs. meaning-based distinction, the represented linguistic units (phonemes, consonants, syllables, morphemes), the regularity of the correspondence between these units and the graphemes that represent them (i.e. orthographic depth or phonological transparency), the physical representations (or scripts) of a writing system (for example, the Roman, Greek, and Cyrillic alphabetic scripts), the sequence in which writing systems are introduced ontologically and their association with an individual's first or second language.

Mayan Historical Linguistics and Epigraphy: A New Synthesis

Recent years have seen rapid advancement in our understanding of the phonology and grammar of Classic Ch'olan and the distribution of Lowland Mayan languages in the Classic period. The control over the data has advanced to such an extent that Classic Ch'olan should no longer be considered chiefly a product of reconstruction, but rather a language in its own right, providing fresh input to historical reconstruction. The interpretation of writing system principles has moved into the forefront of research, and recent discussions of these and other major issues are summarized here. This review suggests that the exceptional phonological transparency of the Maya script, which is a precondition for the current advances in linguistic epigraphy, is rooted in the need of scribes to spell out regional linguistic variants, and a sociolinguistically oriented theory of the evolution of writing in general is formulated and tested on the Mayan hieroglyphic materials.

Grammatical gender is selected in bare noun production: Evidence from the picture–word interference paradigm

Most current models of language production assume that information about gender is selected only in phrasal contexts, and that the phonological form of a noun can be accessed without selecting its syntactic properties. In this paper, we report a series of picture–word interference experiments with Italian-speaking participants where the grammatical gender of nouns and the phonological transparency of suffixes have been manipulated. The results showed a consistent and robust effect of grammatical gender in the production of bare nouns. Naming times were slower to picture–word pairs sharing the same grammatical gender. As reported in studies with Romance languages, the gender congruity effect disappeared when participants were required to produce the noun preceded by the definite determiner. Our results suggest that the selection of grammatical gender reflects a competitive process preceding the access to morpho-phonological forms and that it is mandatory, i.e., it occurs also when the noun has to be produced outside a sentential context.

Nonlinearity between acoustics and articulation in Hungarian transparent vowels

We present novel results from the acoustic and articulatory investigation of the production of the transparent vowels (TVs) /i/, /i:/, /e:/ in Hungarian (colon denotes length). The acoustic measurements of the front–back distinction (second formant, the difference of the first and second formants [Ladefoged, 1993]) show that the effect of adjacent back vowels on the front quality of the TVs is only weakly significant. The articulatory measurements of the same data, however, show that adjacent back vowels cause highly significant retraction of the tongue body during the production of the front TVs. The significance of this finding lies in its relevance to the relationship between phonetics and phonology. Our results demonstrate that minor phonetic differences in articulation, impossible to access by traditional theory, correlate with full-fledged phonological alternation of suffix selection in Hungarian. Traditional phonological accounts predict no effect of continuous phonetic details on discrete phonological generalizations. This is supported in our acoustic data but contrasts with our articulatory findings. In the paper we propose a dynamic model where phonological transparency is directly related to nonlinearity between acoustics and articulation [Stevens, 1989; Wood, 1979]. [Work supported by NIH.]

Phonological processing of words in right- and left-handers

It is commonly accepted that phonology is the exclusive domain of the left hemisphere. However, this pattern of lateralization, which posits a right visual field advantage, has been questioned by several studies. In fact, certain factors such as characteristics of the stimuli and subjects' handedness can modulate the right visual field advantage. Thus, the goal of this study was to compare the hemispheric dynamics of right-handers and left-handers during a divided visual field presentation of words that varied in terms of their phonological transparency. For non-transparent words, the left hemisphere seems more competent in both handedness groups. With regard to transparent words, the right hemisphere of both groups also appears competent. Surprisingly, left-handers achieved optimal processing with a functionally isolated left hemisphere, whereas right-handers needed the participation of both hemispheres. The pattern of performance cannot be fully explained by either the callosal or the direct access model.

Cross-Modal Morphological Priming in French

We investigated the lexical representation of morphologically complex words in French using a cross-modal priming experiment. We asked if the lexical representation for derivationally suffixed and prefixed words is morphologically structured and how this relates to the phonological transparency of the surface relationship between stem and affix. Overall we observed a clear effect of the morphological structure for derived words, an effect that is not explicable by a formal effect. Prefixed words prime their stems, even when they have a phonologically opaque relationship, and a prefixed word primes another prefixed word derived from the same stem. However, suffixed words prime their stems only if their relationship is phonologically transparent. Two suffixed words derived from the same stem prime each other. These two latter results differ from those observed in English by Marslen-Wilson, Tyler, Waksler, and Older (1994). We argue that it is the specific properties of the language, such as rhythm, that could explain the differences between the results observed for the two languages and we propose a model where prefixed and suffixed words are decomposed at different stages during their identification process.

Orthographic Similarity and Phonological Transparency in Spelling.

In a brief, exploratoryspelling intervention, second through fourthgrade students, divided in two groups of 70students, learned to spell Latin loan wordsthat ended in -ion with either alinguistically explicit or implicit method. The -ion words were chosen because theypossess similar orthographic structure inaddition to uniform pronunciation. In theexplicit instruction, linguistic andorthographic properties of the words weresimultaneously considered and non-overlappingdistributive patterns between sound andspelling were discussed, whereas in theimplicit instruction discussion was limited tothe orthographic pattern. The explicitinstruction was based on the Orton–Gillinghammethod. Linguistically explicit instructionimproved discrimination of /zh/ and /sh/sounds, spelling of word endings tion andsion and, most importantly, spellinggeneralization to novel words over implicitinstruction. These results were consistent pergrade. The children in each instructionimproved equally on spelling of the stressedvowel, which did not receive explicit attentionin the intervention, as well as on reading ofboth the stressed vowel and the word endings. Thus, the effectiveness of drawing explicitversus implicit attention was shown across andwithin type of instruction. The results appearto support sound-based spelling instruction.

The autonomy of the orthographic pathway in a shallow language: Data from an aphasic patient

This paper reports the case of a Spanish monolingual aphasic patient, JD, who showed a severe impairment in language production. Overall, the patient's difficulties were much more severe in oral than in written production. This study was an attempt to test whether writing without phonological mediation is possible in a shallow orthography such as Spanish. The results suggest that even in Spanish, despite its orthographic and phonological transparency, there are two writing routes, one based on the phonological representations of words and the other based on a direct access from semantic to the orthographic representations of words. The role played by each route seems to depend on the strategy used by the writer.

The effects of phonological transparency on reading derived words

The purpose of this study was to determine whether poor readers have more pronounced problems than average-reading peers reading derived words the base forms of which undergo a phonological shift when a suffix is added (i.e., shift relations as in “natural”), as compared to derived words whose forms are phonologically and orthographically transparent (i.e., stable relations, as in “cultural”). Two computer-based word recognition tasks (Naming and Lexical Decision) were administered to children with reading disability (RD), peers with average reading ability, and adults. Across tasks, there was an effect for transparency (i.e., better performance on stable than shift words) for both child groups and the adults. For the children, a significant interaction was found between group and word type. Specifically, on the naming task, there was an advantage for the stable words, and this was most noteworthy for the children with RD. On the lexical decision task, trade-offs of speed and accuracy were evident for the child reader groups. Performances on the nonwords showed the poor readers to be comparable to the average readers in distinguishing legal and illegal nonwords; further analyses suggested that poor readers carried out deeper processing of derived words than their average reading peers. Additional study is needed to explore the relation of orthographic and phonological processing on poor readers’ memory for and processing of derived words.

Rapid processing of base and derived forms of words and grades 4, 5 and 6 children's spelling

This paper emphasizes the productive aspect of morphological processingand the effect on spelling proficiency in 226 grades 4, 5 and 6 children. Two convergent studies using reaction time measures aimed at exploring ten- to twelve-year old spellers' sensitivity to, and knowledge of, derivational morphology with lexical items varying in orthographic and phonological transparency and opacity. There is some evidence, from the accurate and rapid vocal production of base forms or derived forms of source words in sentential contexts, that the depth of segmentation to base morphology and the converse process of derived morphology of words, plays a role in spelling performance of these children. There are complex orthographic, phonological and semantic factors affecting morphological processing.

Semantic influence on processing gender agreement: evidence from Hebrew.

In the present study we examined the influence of manipulating the animacy of the sentential subject on the size of the syntactic priming effect induced by violation of subject-predicate gender agreement in Hebrew. The agreement violation delayed naming incongruent compared with congruent predicates. This priming effect was stronger when the sentential subject was an animate than an inanimate noun. Additional experiments revealed that: (1) the interaction between the priming effect and animacy of the subject could not be explained on the basis of differences in the phonological transparency of the gender inflection in the two groups of nouns, and (2) it was sensitive to the ratio of animate/inanimate conditions in a block. We suggest that the interaction between the processing of agreement and the effect of animacy is influenced by a controlled process of verifying the coherence of a currently identified word within a built-up context.

Phonological awareness in illterates: Observations from Serbo-Croatian

ABSTRACTAdult illiterate and semiliterate speakers of Serbo-Croatian were assessed on reading, writing, phonological, and control tasks. Most subjects had acquired measurable literacy skills despite a documented lack of formal instruction. The individual differences in these skills were highly specific. They were related to measures of phoneme segmentation and alphabet knowledge, but only weakly related to general cognitive abilities. Three groups, categorized with respect to the subjects' ability to identify the letters of their Cyrillic alphabet, differed on phoneme deletion and phoneme-counting tasks, but not on syllable-counting, picture vocabulary, or tone-counting tasks. Alphabet knowledge was more tightly coupled with phoneme awareness than has been found in speakers of English. Cross-language similarities and differences are discussed, highlighting the role that phonological transparency of the orthography may play in the acquisition of literacy.

Gender and lexical access in Italian.

Two new procedures were employed to investigate the effects of semantic and grammatical gender on lexical access in Italian and to investigate the interaction of gender with other factors that are known to influence lexical access in other languages. The gender-monitoring task requires a conscious decision about the gender of each noun, whereas the word repetition task does not require explicit attention to gender. In both tasks, single words are presented out of context, under speeded conditions. Both procedures proved to be sensitive indices of word recognition, with reaction times that are closely tied to the point at which words can be uniquely identified (although some processing before and after the uniqueness point was seen). In both tasks, reaction times were strongly affected by phonological factors (e.g., length, number of syllables, and presence of frication on the initial consonant). Phonological transparency of gender marking had a reliable effect on gender monitoring but had no effect on word repetition, suggesting that explicit attention to gender may be a factor affecting utilization of this phonological cue. Semantic factors (including semantic gender) had no effect on performance. Frequency and age of acquisition had very small effects when other factors were controlled. Implications for current models of lexical access are discussed, with special reference to the role of gender.