scholarly journals Is the English writing system phonographic or lexical/morphological? A new look at the spelling of stems

Morphology ◽  
2021 ◽  
Author(s):  
Kristian Berg ◽  
Mark Aronoff
Keyword(s):  
Sound Change ◽  
Writing System ◽  
English Writing ◽  
Phonological Form ◽  
Written Form ◽  
Overall Ratio ◽  
New Look

AbstractThe graphemic distinctiveness of simple word stems in written English (henceforth stems) is usually discussed in terms of the discrimination of homophones: Two or more distinct stems that share a phonological form each have a unique graphemic form (e.g., meat / meet; pair / pear / pare) and in some cases we cannot ascribe the different spellings to etymology: scent ‘should’ be spelled sent given its history (borrowed from French sentir and Latin sentire). The lists in Carney (1994) and Venezky (1999) of heterographic words show that there is a considerable number of homophones that are discriminated in spelling. But there are also many homographic cases (e.g., bank, can), so any stipulated ‘principle of heterography’ is not universal. In this paper, we determine the scope and limitations of this principle empirically. Using the CELEX corpus as well as printed dictionaries, we first determine the number of homophonous simple stems in our data (like bank / bank or pair / pear / pare). Of these, we determine the fraction that has a distinct spelling (like pair / pear / pare). The overall ratio is well below 50%, which means that the principle is not as far-reaching as often assumed. Historically, it appears that in many cases we are not dealing with a graphemic differentiation of stems, but with a conservation of spellings. As a consequence, most distinctive spellings probably corresponded to distinctive sound forms at some point in their history. Sound change then led to homophony, but the graphemic form often remained distinct (as with e.g. loan / lone). Expressing lexical differences in the written form of stems does not seem to be overly important to English writers; there is no widespread lexical or morphological principle at work when it comes to the spelling of English stems.

Intelligent English writing system based on fusion of herding effect and artificial intelligence

2020 ◽  
pp. 1-11
Author(s):  
Liu Guifang
Keyword(s):  
Artificial Intelligence ◽  
Training System ◽  
Small Scale ◽  
Traditional Teaching ◽  
Writing System ◽  
Herd Effect ◽  
College English ◽  
English Writing ◽  
Relative Attractiveness ◽  
Information Sharing Mechanism

The use of intelligent college English writing training system will certainly promote the traditional teaching structure and realize a new and efficient English writing teaching mode. On the basis of machine learning and the herd effect algorithm, this article constructs an artificial intelligence-based English intelligent writing system. Moreover, in view of the shortcomings of traditional models and the characteristics of intelligent English writing, this paper proposes an improved algorithm for optimization of swarm particle walking paths. In addition, this article proposes a relative attractiveness to initialize the formation of small-scale groups based on the herd effect. Then, in the process of intelligent writing, by establishing an information sharing mechanism between groups, each group is continuously updated and reorganized according to the relative attractiveness of the group, so that the writing process can be simulated more realistically. From the experimental research, it can be seen that the model constructed in this paper has a certain degree of intelligence.

The English Writing System

2014 ◽  
Author(s):  
Vivian J Cook
Keyword(s):  
Writing System ◽  
English Writing

“She Doesn’t Have the Basic Understanding of a Language”: Using Spelling Research to Challenge Deficit Conceptualizations of Adolescent Bilinguals

2017 ◽  
Vol 49 (3) ◽  
pp. 342-370 ◽  
Author(s):  
Maneka Deanna Brooks
Keyword(s):  
Language Arts ◽  
English Language ◽  
Home School ◽  
Writing System ◽  
English Learner ◽  
Formal Schooling ◽  
English Writing ◽  
Basic Understanding ◽  
English Spelling

This article examines the alternative English spelling practices of a student who is considered to be a long-term English learner. It draws on a theoretical framework that integrates a social perspective on spelling with a rejection of idealized conceptions of bilingualism. The analyzed English spellings presented in this article were identified in eight texts that the focal student composed during her English language arts class. Notably, this examination was contextualized within the focal student’s linguistic and schooling history. The resulting findings document that the focal student was a simultaneous bilingual who had a troubled history with formal schooling—the place where many young people learn spelling conventions. The predominant practice that characterized her alternative spellings was her use of conventional English sound-to-letter relationships to create a written echo of the speech patterns of her home, school, and community. When her alternative spelling did not reflect these Englishes, they typically illustrated her familiarity with the normative spelling of particular words. Yet the practices that characterized her spelling meant that they strayed from accepted conventions (e.g., transposition/omission/insertion of letters). The focal student’s alternative spelling practices illustrated her familiarity with the English writing system and the depth of her knowledge of multiple Englishes.

scholarly journals Shape-shifting, sound-change and the genesis of prodigal writing systems

2009 ◽  
Vol 13 (1) ◽  
pp. 1-31 ◽  
Author(s):  
MARGARET LAING ◽  
ROGER LASS
Keyword(s):  
Middle English ◽  
Sound Change ◽  
Writing Systems ◽  
English Writing ◽  
Economical System ◽  
New Material ◽  
The Ideal

In a series of articles we have looked at individual early Middle English writing systems and explored aspects of multivocal sound/symbol and symbol/sound relationships. This article combines previous observations with new material, and provides insights into the genesis of these relations and how they may interconnect. Since many early Middle English texts survive as copies, not originals, they may give clues to the orthographic systems of their exemplars too.We investigate the ‘extensibility’ of Litteral and Potestatic Substitution Sets. Writing systems may be economical or prodigal. The ‘ideal’ economical system would map into a broad phonetic or a phonemic transcription: that is, one ‘sound’, one symbol. In early Middle English there is no one standard written norm, so there is potentially less restraint on diversity than in standard systems. Further extensibility is built into the system. We show that much of what tends to be dismissed as ‘scribal error’ rather represents writing praxis no longer familiar to us – flexible matrices of substitution and variation.

The need for addressing multilingualism, ambiguity and interoperability for visual resources management across metadata platforms

First Monday ◽  
2020 ◽  
Author(s):  
Denise Russo ◽  
Abebe Rorissa
Keyword(s):  
Resource Management ◽  
Writing System ◽  
Digital Information ◽  
Significant Percentage ◽  
Resources Management ◽  
English Writing ◽  
Visual Resource Management ◽  
The Creation ◽  
Image Metadata ◽  
Visual Resource

The digitization of visual resources and the creation of corresponding metadata that meets the criteria of clarity and interoperability, while also approaching the needs of the multilingual Web, are pressing concerns. Because visual resources make up a significant percentage of digital information, this paper focuses on the aforementioned concerns and proposes ways to address them, including swift progression and adoption of cohesive, multi-user, multilingual metadata standardization to improve digital access and to allow all descriptive image metadata to be approachable and translatable. We offer some recommendations such as those involved in visual resource management moving away from using primarily the English writing system based metadata schemas in order to provide flexible lexicon in non-Roman languages, which can easily be recognized and interpreted by both monolingual and multilingual users alike as well as facilitate digital metadata interoperability.

Las primeras propuestas de ‘Selección de Norma’ para el gallego

1997 ◽  
Vol 24 (1-2) ◽  
pp. 139-157
Author(s):  
Mauro Fernández
Keyword(s):  
20Th Century ◽  
19Th Century ◽  
18Th Century ◽  
Writing System ◽  
Mountainous Regions ◽  
15Th Century ◽  
The People ◽  
Written Form ◽  
Actual Speech ◽  
The One

Summary Linguistic sttudies of Galician began in the last third of the 18th century with Father Martín Sarmiento (1695–1772). Since the tradition of writing in this language had been interrupted towards the end of the 15th century, its later recovery required certain decisions on what the model for ‘good Galician’ would be as well as on the norm for the writing system. In this article, I will explore the various destinies of the available options: (1) the adherence to actual speech; (2) the adherence to an archaic available norm; and (3) the approach to the Portuguese norm, which in its extreme formulation, assumes the adoption of this language as the high variant and the written form of Galician. A close examination of prefaces and introductions to grammars, dictionaries, and other relevant texts shows a clear preference for the first solution. ‘Good Galician’ would thus be the one spoken by the people, in all its diversity, with some exclusions which varied according to the author: In some cases, important towns and urban variants were excluded; in others, the mountainous regions and the areas bordering with Castile; and in certain cases, the ‘people’ only meant ‘the best’ in each town. Options 2 and 3 made a timid appearance towards the end of 19th century even though 3 gained acceptance throughout the 20th century, specially in the last twenty years.

A Theoretical Analysis of the Effects of Writing System Characteristics on Learning to Read

1971 ◽  
Vol 4 (1) ◽  
pp. 50-58 ◽  
Author(s):  
William B. Gillooly
Keyword(s):  
Experimental Data ◽  
Verbal Learning ◽  
Behavioral Effects ◽  
Writing System ◽  
Learning Models ◽  
Learning To Read ◽  
English Writing ◽  
Reading Experience ◽  
Mediation Processes ◽  
System Characteristics

This paper summarizes the work of those seeking to analyze English orthography as well as the data which bear on the behavioral effects of writing system characteristics. English writing is shown to involve at least two levels of representation. One level is sound-related (phonographic representation) but another, deeper level of representation is meaning-related (orthographic representation). The results of this analysis are combined with verbal learning models in order to explain the experimental data. Reading is viewed as involving mediation processes which depend, in part, on reading experience. Hence, the effects of increased reading experience involve not only changes in the functional stimuli for reading as Gibson has proposed but also changes in the nature of the responses to those stimuli. The implications of this notion are discussed briefly.

scholarly journals Utilizing an Automated Tool Analysis to Evaluate EFL Students’ Writing Performance

2020 ◽  
Author(s):  
Anongnad Petchprasert
Keyword(s):  
Undergraduate Students ◽  
Assessment Tools ◽  
Evaluation Tool ◽  
Writing Performance ◽  
Writing Ability ◽  
Writing Evaluation ◽  
English Writing ◽  
Electronic Assessment ◽  
English Major ◽  
Written Form

Abstract Recently, the integration of linguistics and technology has been promoted and widely used in the field of linguistics and English writing for several purposes. One of those purposes is to evaluate EFL writing ability by using electronic assessment tools in language teaching or rhetorical studies. In this study, an automated writing evaluation tool (Coh-Metrix version 3.0) was used to indicate English-major students’ writing performance based on the six discourse components of the texts and to determine the associations between those six results of Coh-Metrix analyses. The 80 EFL texts produced for each scheme of writing tasks on two different topics were collected. The corpus analyses gathered from Coh-Metrix identify linguistic and discourse features that were interpreted to determine the 40 EFL undergraduate students’ English writing abilities. The students wrote and revised their essays in a hand written form in class and resubmitted their essays in digital forms with corrections made. The results showed that these writers demonstrated linguistic flexibility across writing prompts that they produced. The analyses also indicated that the length of the texts, the word concreteness and the uses of the referential and deep cohesion had impacts on the students’ writing performances across the writing tasks. Besides, the findings suggest practical value in using the Coh-Metrix to support teachers’ instructional decisions that could help to identify improvement of students’ writing skill.

scholarly journals Outlandish Spelling System Invented by Indonesian Internet Society: The Case of Language Usage in Social Networking Site

2018 ◽  
Vol 7 (7) ◽  
pp. 66
Author(s):  
Rizky Anugrah Putra ◽  
Sulis Triyono
Keyword(s):  
Social Factor ◽  
Written Language ◽  
Social Networking Site ◽  
Human Interaction ◽  
Writing System ◽  
Written Form ◽  
Actual Meaning ◽  
Language User ◽  
Alphabetic Writing ◽  
Bahasa Indonesia

Before having consistent alphabetic writing system, Bahasa Indonesia had encountered several developments in orthographic enhancement. Bahasa Indonesia need to be enhanced for several reasons such as to create national identity and also to provide an ideal spelling system. Orthography system helps the language user to associate the symbol, sound, and meaning. For those reasons, the spelling system is important in written language since most of information and knowledge are preserved in written form. As time passes, there is almost no barrier in human interaction since the distance is narrowed by the technology. To use it efficiently, the language users utilize their language to be shorter but it is easier to understand. However, it creates discrepancy in the orthography system which hinders the interlocutor to get the actual meaning of the written language. This article reveals an issue about orthography system which is made by internet society in which has unusual alphabetic spelling system. The peculiarity is caused by psychological and social factor which revert the spelling model to be identical to children (immature speech).

Spelling of Phonemes: Correct Spellings, Legal Substitutions, and Illegal Substitutions

1993 ◽  
Author(s):  
Rebecca Treiman
Keyword(s):  
Traditional View ◽  
Writing System ◽  
English Writing ◽  
Correct Spelling ◽  
Spoken Words

So far, I have examined children’s spellings at the level of whole words. The results show that children have more difficulty with some kinds of words than others. For example, children often misspell words that contain multiple-letter graphemes, words such as that and sang. Children often misspell irregular words, words such as said and come. One would guess that th is the trouble spot in that and ai is the trouble spot in said. However, because the analyses presented so far are confined to whole words, I cannot say for sure. To determine which parts of words are difficult to spell, I must move from the level of whole words to the level of individual phonemes and individual graphemes. The need to examine children’s spellings at the level of phonemes and graphemes stems from the nature of the English writing system itself. As discussed in Chapter 1, the English writing system is basically alphabetic. Although most phonemes may be spelled in more than one way, there are relations between phonemes and graphemes. For instance, /k/ may be spelled with k, as in key, c, as in care, or ck, as in back, among other possibilities. Adults cannot always choose the correct spelling from among these possibilities, but we know that /k/ could never be written with m or b. Our knowledge of phoneme-grapheme correspondences tells us that Carl or Karl are reasonable renditions of the spoken form /k’arl/ but that Marl is not. Traditionally, it was thought that children learn to spell on a visual basis, by memorizing the sequence of letters in each word. In this view, children treat printed words as wholes. They do not learn relations between the parts of printed words (graphemes) and the parts of spoken words (phonemes). The traditional view further implies that children memorize one word at a time. They do not learn relations between sounds and spellings that apply to many different words. Findings reported in Chapter 2 suggest that this traditional view of learning to spell is incorrect For example, children's difficulty on irregular words like said and come suggests that children learn about the correspondences between phonemes and graphemes.

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