Rule-based Korean Grapheme to Phoneme Conversion Using Sound Patterns

PACLIC 23 / City University of Hong Kong / 3-5 December 200

A comparative study of syllables and morphemes as literacy processing units in word recognition: IsiXhosa and SeTswana

Word recognition is a core foundation of reading (Invenizzi and Hayes 2010) and involves interactions of language skills, metalinguistic skills and orthography. The extent of the interaction with one another in reading has yet to be fully explored, especially in the Southern-Bantu languages. This comparative study of isiXhosa and Setswana explores this three-way interaction between language skills (effect of Language of Learning and Teaching (LoLT)), metalinguistic skills (Phonological and Morphological Awareness) and orthography (conjunctivism vs. disjunctivism). This thesis is novel in three respects, (a) a set of linguistic-informed reading measures were developed in isiXhosa and Setswana for the first-time, (b) to my knowledge, the comparisons made and study of Morphological Awareness in the Southern-Bantu languages have never been done, and (c) the use of d-prime as a way of testing for grain size in reading is an innovative approach. Grade 3 and Grade 4 learners were tested on four independent linguistic tasks: an open-ended decomposition task, a Phonological Awareness task, a Morphological Awareness task and an independent reading measure. These tasks were administered to determine the grain size unit (Ziegler and Goswami 2005, Ziegler et al. 2001) which learners use in word recognition, with the grain sizes of syllables and morphemes being studied. Results showed that syllables were the dominant grain size in both isiXhosa and Setswana, with morphemes as secondary grains in isiXhosa. Grain size differed slightly between the two orthographies. These results are reflected in the scores on the metalinguistic tasks. LoLT was not shown to have a significant impact on word recognition in first-language reading. The Psycholinguistic Grain Size Theory (PGST) was found to be the most applicable model of word recognition to the Southern- Bantu languages, as opposed to the Dual-Route Cascade Model and Orthographic Depth Hypothesis. This thesis concludes with suggested adaptations to this theory in order to allow for morpheme grain size to be included. This study has implications for teaching practice and curriculum design, and contributes to a broader understanding of literacy in the foundation phase in the Southern-Bantu languages

A COGNITIVE APPROACH TO PHONOLOGY: EVIDENCE FROM SIGNED LANGUAGES

This dissertation uses corpus data from ASL and Libras (Brazilian Sign Language), to investigate the distribution of a series of static and dynamic handshapes across the two languages. While traditional phonological frameworks argue handshape distribution to be a facet of well-formedness constraints and articulatory ease (Brentari, 1998), the data analyzed here suggests that the majority of handshapes cluster around schematic form-meaning mappings. Furthermore, these schematic mappings are shown to be motivated by both language-internal and language-external construals of formal articulatory properties and embodied experiential gestalts. Usage-based approaches to phonology (Bybee, 2001) and cognitively oriented constructional approaches (Langacker, 1987) have recognized that phonology is not modular. Instead, phonology is expected to interact with all levels of grammar, including semantic association. In this dissertation I begin to develop a cognitive model of phonology which views phonological content as similar in kind to other constructional units of language. I argue that, because formal units of linguistic structure emerge from the extraction of commonalities across usage events, phonological form is not immune from an accumulation of semantic associations. Finally, I demonstrate that appealing to such approaches allows one to account for both idiosyncratic, unconventionalized mappings seen in creative language use, as well as motivation in highly conventionalized form-meaning associations

An analysis of the short and long-term validity of the Phonic Inventories.

The Phonic Inventories are a three level spelling test which was developed to enable identification of the patterns of spelling error made by children, as an aid for teachers and therapists. The aim of this study is to test the assumptions of face validity, content validity, construct validity and discriminant validity of the Phonic Inventories, as well as their short and long-term reliability. This has been done by using both longitudinal and cross-sectional datasets from 1979 and 2001. The results of the study indicate that the three levels of the instrument are reliable, and that they have potential for clinical as well as classroom use in determining which alphabetic rules learners have or have not acquired. They also have potential for use by teachers for screening purposes, with the aim of identifying learners experiencing difficulties in learning the rule systems used in reading and writing

The effect of printed word attributes on Arabic reading

Printed Arabic texts usually contain no short vowels and therefore a single letter string can often be associated with two or more distinct pronunciations and meanings. The high level of homography is believed to present difficulties for the skilled reader. However, this is the first study to gather empirical evidence on what readers know about the different words that can be associated with each homograph. There are few studies of the effects of psycholinguistic variables on Arabic word naming and lexical decision. The present work therefore involved the creation of a database of 1,474 unvowelised letter strings, which was used to undertake four studies. The first study presented lists of unvowelised letter strings and asked participants to produce the one or more word forms (with short vowels) evoked by each target. Responses to 1,474 items were recorded from 445 adult speakers of Arabic. The number of different vowelised forms associated with each letter string and the percentage agreement were calculated. The second study collected subjective Age-of-Acquisition ratings from 89 different participants for the agreed vowelised form of each letter string. The third study asked 38 participants to produce pronunciation responses to 1,474 letter strings. Finally, 40 different participants were asked to produce lexical decisions to 1,352 letter strings and 1,352 matched non-word letter strings. Mixed-effects models showed that orthographic frequency, Age-of-Acquisition and name agreement influenced word naming, while lexical decision was not affected by name agreement. Findings indicate that lexical decision in Arabic requires recognition of a basic shared morphemic structure, whereas word naming requires identification of a unique phonological representation. It takes longer to name a word when there are more possible pronunciations. The Age-of-Acquisition effect is consistent with a developmental theory of reading

Script Effects as the Hidden Drive of the Mind, Cognition, and Culture

This open access volume reveals the hidden power of the script we read in and how it shapes and drives our minds, ways of thinking, and cultures. Expanding on the Linguistic Relativity Hypothesis (i.e., the idea that language affects the way we think), this volume proposes the “Script Relativity Hypothesis” (i.e., the idea that the script in which we read affects the way we think) by offering a unique perspective on the effect of script (alphabets, morphosyllabaries, or multi-scripts) on our attention, perception, and problem-solving. Once we become literate, fundamental changes occur in our brain circuitry to accommodate the new demand for resources. The powerful effects of literacy have been demonstrated by research on literate versus illiterate individuals, as well as cross-scriptal transfer, indicating that literate brain networks function differently, depending on the script being read. This book identifies the locus of differences between the Chinese, Japanese, and Koreans, and between the East and the West, as the neural underpinnings of literacy. To support the “Script Relativity Hypothesis”, it reviews a vast corpus of empirical studies, including anthropological accounts of human civilization, social psychology, cognitive psychology, neuropsychology, applied linguistics, second language studies, and cross-cultural communication. It also discusses the impact of reading from screens in the digital age, as well as the impact of bi-script or multi-script use, which is a growing trend around the globe. As a result, our minds, ways of thinking, and cultures are now growing closer together, not farther apart. ; Examines the origin, emergence, and co-evolution of written language, the human mind, and culture within the purview of script effects Investigates how the scripts we read over time shape our cognition, mind, and thought patterns Provides a new outlook on the four representative writing systems of the world Discusses the consequences of literacy for the functioning of the min

Word Knowledge and Word Usage

Word storage and processing define a multi-factorial domain of scientific inquiry whose thorough investigation goes well beyond the boundaries of traditional disciplinary taxonomies, to require synergic integration of a wide range of methods, techniques and empirical and experimental findings. The present book intends to approach a few central issues concerning the organization, structure and functioning of the Mental Lexicon, by asking domain experts to look at common, central topics from complementary standpoints, and discuss the advantages of developing converging perspectives. The book will explore the connections between computational and algorithmic models of the mental lexicon, word frequency distributions and information theoretical measures of word families, statistical correlations across psycho-linguistic and cognitive evidence, principles of machine learning and integrative brain models of word storage and processing. Main goal of the book will be to map out the landscape of future research in this area, to foster the development of interdisciplinary curricula and help single-domain specialists understand and address issues and questions as they are raised in other disciplines

Phonological and orthographic processing in deaf readers during recognition of written and fingerspelled words in Spanish and English

The role of phonological and orthographic access during word recognition, as well as its developmental trajectory in deaf readers is still a matter of debate. This thesis examined how phonological and orthographic information is used during written and fingerspelled word recognition by three groups of deaf readers: 1) adult readers of English, 2) adult and 3) young readers of Spanish. I also investigated whether the size of the orthographic and phonological effects was related to reading skill and other related variables: vocabulary, phonological awareness, speechreading and fingerspelling abilities. A sandwich masked priming paradigm was used to assess automatic phonological (pseudohomophone priming; Experiments 1-3) and orthographic (transposed-letter priming; Experiments 4–6) effects in all groups during recognition of single written words. To examine fingerspelling processing, pseudohomophone (Experiments 7–9) and transposed-letter (Experiments 10-12) effects were examined in lexical decision tasks with fingerspelled video stimuli. Phonological priming effects were found for adult deaf readers of English. Interestingly, for deaf readers of Spanish only those young readers with a small vocabulary size showed phonological priming. Conversely, orthographic masked priming was found in adult deaf readers of English and Spanish as well as young deaf readers with large vocabulary size. Reading ability was only correlated to the orthographic priming effect (in accuracy) in the adult deaf readers of English. Fingerspelled pseudohomophones took longer than control pseudowords to reject as words in the adult deaf readers of English and in the young deaf readers of Spanish with a small vocabulary, suggesting sensitivity to speech phonology in these groups. The findings suggest greater reliance on phonology by less skilled deaf readers of both Spanish and English. Additionally, they suggest greater reliance on phonology during both word and fingerspelling processing in deaf readers of a language with a deeper orthography (English), than by expert readers of a shallow orthography (Spanish)