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This article presents the Spanish version of the Computer-Assisted Listening and Speaking Tutor (CALST), an online platform that can be used to complement pronunciation training in the classroom. The Spanish CALST offers listening, speaking, and spelling exercises for Northern-Central Peninsular Spanish as an L2. Exercises are tailored by an automatic comparison with the learner's native language based on a database of phonetically specified phoneme inventories for over 500 languages, with the result that learners with different L1s are exposed to different exercises adapted to their specific needs. In this article, we present a description of the exercises as well as the criteria used to develop Spanish content for CALST. We discuss the limitations of the platform, the logging of user results as a partial solution to these limitations, and the possible future use of the logged data to increase our understanding of L2 acquisition. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Hangul is widely categorized as a classic example of a morphophonemic orthography, in which each morpheme receives a single spelling, even if its pronunciation varies from context to context. This paper makes the case that Hangul is in fact a hybrid orthography that adheres to a morphophonemic strategy for spelling consonants but adopts the conventions of a phonetic writing system for representing vowels. Various explanations for this arrangement are considered. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

This paper examines the choices made at the levels of Ausbau ('language by development', Kloss 1967: 29–30) and Abstand ('language by distance', ibid) during the codification phase of Mauritian Creole. Using the document Lortograf Kreol Morisien (Ministry of Education and Human Resources 2011) as its focal point, it studies the co-association between Ausbau and Abstand and connects the choices made to a broader ideological framework which sets out to 'promot[e] our country's language' (Hookoomsing 2011: 9). It explores the implication of adopting a linguistic form which a user can 'intimately connect with loved ones, community and personal identity' (Delpit 2006: 95) while simultaneously providing it with the stature traditionally enjoyed by the lexifier. In the final instance it views the decreasing Abstand of Mauritian Creole as a form of prestige planning (Haarmann 1986) carried out with the possible intention of enhancing its public image. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

A hallmark of word naming in deep orthographies, effects of spelling-sound regularity and consistency are considered to reach stability in adulthood. We investigated whether these effects were modulated by second language (L2) proficiency in native English and native Spanish speakers. Participants named English, Spanish and language-ambiguous words, but only the English words were used in the analysis. Participants in each group named English words with irregular-inconsistent mappings (e.g., PINT) more slowly and less accurately than words with regular-consistent mappings (e.g., GATE). Higher English proficiency reduced the magnitude of the regularity-consistency effect in both groups. Critically, native English speakers revealed a U-shaped relationship between L2-Spanish proficiency and the regularity-consistency effect on naming latencies. The current findings add to a growing body of literature that considers the boundaries within which L2 proficiency can influence native language (L1) performance. Results suggest that L2 proficiency may destabilize a fundamental aspect of L1 literacy, the computation of phonology from text, which is known as a highly stable psycholinguistic effect. This suggests that the language system is dynamic, remaining plastic in early adulthood. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

The article analyzes a dictation corpus from a French spelling competition in Belgium, focusing on orthographic variation and phoneme-grapheme correspondences, particularly for context-sensitive graphemes like c or g. Results show that despite the popularity of the competition, many primary school children struggle with spelling, with the majority making between 5 and 14 mistakes. The study highlights difficulties in mastering the relationship between phonics and spelling, especially with graphemes like c and g. The research project was funded by the Ministry of the Wallonia-Brussels Federation, and the authors acknowledge support from various individuals. [Extracted from the article]

This study examined the accuracy of English-speaking learners of Spanish in storing L2 sounds within cognates and noncognates, specifically in words containing 〈g〉 and 〈h〉, which have differing cross-linguistic phoneme-grapheme correspondences. In the first task, participants heard Spanish words with target-like pronunciations of 〈g〉 and 〈h〉 or inaccurate pronunciations with an English-like phonemic substitution for these graphemes, and they decided whether or not they were words. The second task had participants decide between the two pronunciations of each Spanish word and select the accurate pronunciation. The findings in both tasks showed that for L2 learners, 〈h〉 cognate words had less accurate phonological representations compared to all other conditions, possibly due to the greater consistency in phoneme-grapheme correspondence for 〈h〉 in English. These results show that cognate status and orthographic (in)congruity interact to influence the accuracy of L2 lexical encoding. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

This paper proposes a linguistic theoretical review of French spelling surrounding regularity and consistency questions both in the description of forms and in the estimation of regularity. After having described the terminological ambiguity that prevails in these analyses and after having shown the impact of this ambiguity on the analysis of written errors, we propose a new classification of French written errors passing through theoretically-driven and concept-driven analyses. This classification, focuses on the production of lexical and grammatical spelling created for the DynaPen project and is available on OSF. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

This article details how introductory linguistics courses can increase student engagement and learning through a project-based approach, whereby the students first study the subfields of linguistics with a view to complete the main project of the course, namely to construct a novel language. I provide information from a semester-long course with specific project-based activities teachers could utilize in their classes. I also thoroughly examine the constructed language projects based on 33 student submissions in an introductory linguistics course in the US. The analysis indicates a high level of engagement and creativity by the students in creating a distinct orthography, phonetic, morphological, and syntactic rules and semantic properties for their constructed languages. The results from a 20-item questionnaire and student exit interviews indicate that the project-based approach adopted in the completion of their constructed languages proved effective in (a) improving student motivation and engagement; (b) helping students apply the knowledge of the material to carry out linguistic analysis; (c) enhancing students' language learning skills; (d) encouraging them to study additional foreign languages; and finally (e) promoting linguistic diversity. Hence, as an innovative and effective method still in its infancy, project-based learning should be more widely implemented in linguistics instruction. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

German modal particles (MPs) show semantic, pragmatic, and syntactic peculiarities which make them specifically interesting for research on language processing. However, so far, there are no tests available that reliably elicit MPs in order to study their production in different groups of speakers. This paper presents the Modal Particle Elicitation Test – MoPET. Based on simple contexts and black and white drawings, it is the first test that elicits a wide range of MPs by incorporating the semantic, pragmatic, and syntactic peculiarities of MPs. The goal of this paper is to evaluate whether the test reliably elicits MPs in adult German L1 speakers, in order to use it for research on different speakers (e.g., patients and L1/L2 learners) in the future. Results of a pilot study with 27 adult native speakers of German demonstrate that the test reliably elicits a wide range of nineteen different MPs and a wide range of different sentence types that are strongly interconnected with the use of MPs. Crucially, each of the twelve critical scenes of the test elicited at least one MP, and each participant produced at least one MP, which also makes the test suitable for diagnostic purposes. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

This study investigates the relationship between (extra)linguistic variables and proficiency in a foreign language. Based on 1,403 secondary school students in Germany (age 12/13 and 14/15), we assess whether proficiency in German, if applicable also Russian or Turkish, cognitive ability, school type, gender, socio-economic status, self-concept, motivation, and self-assessment function differently in predicting English language proficiency when monolingual German learners of English (n = 849) are compared to their bilingual peers (Russian-German: n = 236; Turkish-German: n = 318). Two comprehensive structural equation models capture the multitude of factors influencing foreign language acquisition and contribute to the discussion on multilingual advantages or effects. The results reveal that most variables are statistically significant, but the models function comparably across the three language groups with only minor contrasts regarding effect sizes. We submit that the three language groups are more similar than different and that the heritage languages Russian and Turkish add comparatively little to predicting English language proficiency. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Summary: This article brings to light an unpublished treatise on orthographically different but phonetically identical vowels entitled Περὶ ἀντιστοίχων and transmitted in manuscripts Barocci 10 (14th/15th century) and Barocci 48 (15th century), both kept in the Bodleian library in Oxford. The Περὶ ἀντιστοίχων is one of the many orthographical works composed to help with the spelling problems that arose in the Greek language due to the fact that over the centuries the sound of certain Greek vowels became identical, thus making the spelling of words a real challenge. As well as providing the editio princeps for this text, this article discusses its history and background, its features, and its relationship with other grammatical and lexicographical sources, primarily with Pseudo-Zonaras' Lexicon, and suggests that the Περὶ ἀντιστοίχων is possibly an indirect witness to Pseudo-Zonaras' Lexicon. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Spanish texts produced in Mallorca during the 18th century show a more stable distinction between 〈b〉 and 〈v〉 as compared with texts produced in mainland Spain. Based on a multidisciplinary approach that combines diachronic and synchronic analyses with statistical methods, we aim in this work at examining the distribution of these spellings in order to connect them to features from the current variety of Catalan spoken on the island. We propose a phonetic interpretation that contributes to the characterization of the historical variety of the Spanish spoken in Mallorca, which can help to deepen our understanding of linguistic variation and change phenomena for languages in contact. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Zamboanga Chavacano is a Philippine Creole Spanish (PCS) variety, spoken as a first language (L1) by over 400,000 people (as of 2010). However, its spelling was only recently standardised, in 2014. This paper describes a research aimed at semi-automatically identifying and annotating spelling errors commonly made by Chavacano speakers in writing, according to its standardised orthography. Firstly, we explain in detail the criteria for the construction of a written Chavacano corpus containing over 8 million words, the genres that it comprises, and the formats used to code it. Secondly, we describe the steps taken in the study of the spelling errors present in this corpus and in the development of a taxonomy created to represent and classify them, later formalised as a ontology. Finally, we discuss the main results of this work, namely a written Zamboanga Chavacano corpus with semi-automatically classified and annotated spelling errors linked to an ontology and accompanied by the corresponding corrected forms. These annotations will enable us to carry out a systematic and deeper analysis of the spelling mistakes made by Zamboanga Chavacano writers. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Copyright of Language, Interaction & Acquisition / Langage, Interaction et Acquisition is the property of John Benjamins Publishing Co. and its content may not be copied or emailed to multiple sites or posted to a listserv without the copyright holder's express written permission. However, users may print, download, or email articles for individual use. This abstract may be abridged. No warranty is given about the accuracy of the copy. Users should refer to the original published version of the material for the full abstract. (Copyright applies to all Abstracts.)

The present study uses an acoustic analysis to examine the effects of implicit and explicit pronunciation instruction on the acquisition of German final devoicing in the L2 classroom. Twenty-nine English-speaking L2 learners of German at a North American university were assigned to an implicit or explicit condition. Learner speech samples were recorded, following a pre/post/delayed-post-test design. Four acoustic correlates of final and medial obstruent voicing were analyzed to establish the degree to which underlyingly voiced word-final stops were phonetically devoiced. Results indicate that learners in the explicit condition significantly outperformed learners in the implicit condition, with all four acoustic measures signaling significantly greater word-final devoicing by the post-test in the explicit condition. Orthography, declarative knowledge, and level of awareness are hypothesized as factors that influenced the acquisition process. The study calls for additional acoustic work on the effects of different instructional practices on German L2 pronunciation. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

The standardisation of English spelling is widely assumed to have happened, or at least started, during the fifteenth century, with a variety of theories about the location and spread of the process. This paper provides an in-depth analysis of a single spelling feature: the vowel in the word said. It demonstrates that there were four main variants used across the country during the fifteenth and early sixteenth century, with preference for the modern standard form 〈ai〉 in Cambridgeshire, Middlesex and the Northern counties but for 〈ei〉 elsewhere. The analysis further raises serious questions about the claim that standardisation of the spelling system was well underway by the end of the fifteenth century, clearly showing that there was no reduction in either intra- or inter-document variation during the period covered by the MELD corpus, 1399–1525. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

We can observe a systematic reorganization of the Latin Spelling System in the II and I centuries BC. We will focus on the etiology and diffusion of spelling for the /ks/ cluster instead of , highlighting the interplay between centripetal and centrifugal forces in the standardization process. Its etiology and further diffusion will be compared to the emergence of other spelling innovations in the Latin writing system of the second century BC. We will propose that the progressive integration of spelling in the systematic orthography of Latin was favored by both morpho-graphemic and phono-graphemic factors. Moreover, we will take into consideration the complex social network of the Roman Republic to trace back diffusion path. We will propose that, alongside the leading role of the urban elites in its diffusion, also local communities independently developed such a spelling variant, probably as a consequence of Greek systematic orthography's influence. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Orthographic depth is a key concept in literacy acquisition and can be measured separately for completeness, simplicity and consistency. The first of these is pertinent to discussions about whether tone should be marked in African orthographies, because a zero tone representation is relatively incomplete and deep whereas a full tone orthography is relatively complete and shallow. We undertook a series of literacy experiments in ten Niger-Congo languages to test the extent to which full tone marking contributes to reading and writing skills. In a within-subject design that closely follows Bird (1999b), participants orally read two full tone and two zero tone texts and also added tone accents to unmarked versions of two of the texts. Speed, accuracy, comprehension, as well as a range of linguistic, ethno-literacy, demographic and L2 literacy variables were tracked. The present article narrows the scope of the wider research project (Roberts & Walter 2021) to two of the languages, Yoruba and Ife, which are linguistically similar, yet have highly dissimilar results. In Yoruba, full tone marking does not contribute to any improvement in reading measurements, and tone writing skills are generally poor. In Ife, on the other hand, full tone marking contributes to speed, accuracy and comprehension, and tone writing is the most accurate of all the languages. The results suggest that the social profile of the participant and the ethno-literacy profile of the language community are more predictive of reading and writing performance than is the linguistic profile of the language. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

The current study evaluated how characteristics of Hebrew, a Semitic language with an abjad writing system, are manifested in Hebrew-speaking preschoolers' play with a computerized spelling game adapted for Hebrew. The game words were of different lengths and structures so as to include the entire Hebrew alphabet and all the vowels (a, e, i, o, u) in all possible positions in the word (first, last, second). We analyzed the 18,720 spellings typed by 96 preschoolers aged 5;7 years (on average) who played the game during eight sessions (about 20 minutes per session) in one month. The study indicated a greater difficulty in spelling א , ה , ו , י letters as consonants than as vowels, and more success in spelling ב , כ , פ letters that are pronounced as stops, as compared to the same letters that are pronounced as spirants. The success in spelling consonants and consonant-vowel letters was identical. Within a word, there was greater success in spelling the first letter, than in spelling the last letter, and the second letter. The length of the word did not influence success in spelling the first, second, or last letter in the word. At the same time, spelling an entire shorter word was easier than spelling an entire longer word. Lastly, spelling of words to which children had more exposures was easier than spelling words with only a single exposure. The discussion focuses on the implications of the study and refers to the nature of appropriate literacy-oriented digital Hebrew games and activities with preschoolers. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

This article focuses on the practical problems that go along with the sequencing of older non-standardised spelling forms into consonant and vowel graphemes. The issue of segmental parsing is important in research on the development of Dutch spelling, mostly drawing from thirteenth and fourteenth century charter spellings. The research aims are introduced in part 1, and then the problems of defining graphs and then syllables are discussed in part 2. These problems stem from the theoretical graphemic level, but have a very direct impact on the practical level, as they hinder the automatic parsing of tokens in the corpus, as discussed in part 3. The goal of this article is to provide partial solutions in parsing of non-standardised language data for graphemic research. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Macro-level, quantitative approaches to certain scribal features such as spelling have offered much to the development of the field of manuscript studies, and yet the evidence afforded by abbreviation remains hitherto largely unexamined. This paper examines a bestiary found within a discrete section of a codex in Merton College Library in Oxford, using it as a case study to assess the value of examining features of scribal abbreviation through mixed-method analysis. Such an approach has utility in allowing us to reinforce or challenge existing hypotheses regarding the production of individual manuscript units, but it has not yet reached its full potential, and future work is required, particularly in the analysis of dated and datable manuscripts, in order to reveal how quantitative facts about scribal preferences changed over time, and how this can be used in the examination of manuscripts for which no date of creation is known. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

This study builds off of previous research into Caribbean Standard Englishes (which has largely used newspaper genres) by comparing the rates of features found in corpora of Bahamian, Jamaican, British, and American administrative writing, paying particular attention to whether and how the noted formality of Caribbean Standard Englishes manifests itself in administrative writing. The study employs expanded versions of ICE administrative subcorpora for the analysis. Features analyzed include lexis, orthography, as well as different morphosyntactic constructions such as be-passives and modals of obligation and necessity. The study finds that the contemporary British administrative writing corpus contains the most informal lexical choice of the national corpora studied, problematizing a Caribbean folk narrative that associates formality in administrative language and practice with Britishness. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

What is the hallmark of a good speller? Spelling is a critical component in learning to become literate, but how it works in literate adults remains poorly explored. We examined word and pseudoword spelling in 214 adults in relation to general cognitive abilities, vocabulary, reading history, reading performance, phonological processing and rapid automatized naming. We conducted hierarchical multiple regression analyses to uncover predictors of spelling performance and compared a subsample of good and poor spellers to identify patterns of cognitive and language abilities associated with high vs. low spelling ability. In the regression model under test, which progressed from general cognitive and language abilities to specific reading-related skills, the most important predictor for word spelling was vocabulary, and for pseudoword spelling phonological processing (phoneme deletion). The model explained 20% of word spelling, and 8% of pseudoword spelling, variance. Good spellers outperformed poor spellers in reading connected text and pseudowords, and in phonological processing; poor spellers typically had a history of reading difficulties but similar levels of cognitive ability, word reading and RAN performance. Overall, our findings indicate that adult spelling relies more strongly on word knowledge than on reading proficiency and that, as in literacy acquisition, good phonology-related abilities are a hallmark of proficient adult spellers. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Becoming a proficient speller in English is a challenging task requiring integration of knowledge from multiple linguistic and cognitive sources. Spelling in English as a foreign language (EFL) is more complex when the distance between the different languages of the speller is great. Whereas binary scoring practices are prevalent, they are not as informative as analyses of errors based on linguistic characteristics. The present longitudinal study examined the development of spelling in EFL among speakers of Semitic L1, Arabic and Hebrew (N = 354). A dictation task on a one-word level assessed spelling from 4th–6th grades. Spellings were first scored for accuracy and then analyzed based primarily on phonological and orthographic characteristics. Errors were then grouped according to four predominant developmental trends. While similarities with L1 spelling development were noted, some of the error types could be attributed to unique characteristics of linguistic distance between Semitic languages and English. Both theoretical and practical implications are considered. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Spelling is a complex skill that requires mobilizing various levels of linguistic and orthographic representation. While there is substantial evidence of the impact of phonological skills in its development, less is known about the explanatory value of non-phonological (e.g., morphological, orthographic) strategies in conventional spelling scores. This study assessed the unique impact of non-phonological spelling strategies after accounting for a large set of linguistic and cognitive predictors, as well as contextual variables (e.g., SES) in a language with a semi-consistent orthography: Catalan. Participants were 328 eighth-grade students from low-income households. Results showed that non-phonological spelling skills explained a substantial proportion of the variance in conventional spelling, over and above the rest of predictor variables, including phonographic skills, with the final model explaining more than 80% of the variance. Theoretical and educational implications are discussed. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Moreover exploring the cognitive and linguistic predictors of good and poor adult spelling can further elucidate the developmental path for spelling by understanding if spelling engages the same or different processes in childhood and in adulthood. These adaptations are particularly vital since evidence suggests that whereas spellers of additional languages may produce spellings and spelling errors that align with native-like spellings at different stages of development, the causes for these spellings and spelling errors may be contextualized by the interplay between the features of the L1 and the target language of the learner. This analysis was followed by a fine-grained analysis adapted from the Phonology, Orthography, Morphology Analysis of Spelling (POMAS, [4]) where spelling errors were categorized based on linguistic characteristics. [Extracted from the article]

Copyright of Language, Interaction & Acquisition / Langage, Interaction et Acquisition is the property of John Benjamins Publishing Co. and its content may not be copied or emailed to multiple sites or posted to a listserv without the copyright holder's express written permission. However, users may print, download, or email articles for individual use. This abstract may be abridged. No warranty is given about the accuracy of the copy. Users should refer to the original published version of the material for the full abstract. (Copyright applies to all Abstracts.)

Decoding a writing system is an impressive task requiring recognition of connections between printed symbols and the language they represent. Recognising the linguistic anchors for individual symbols is however not enough. Inferences are needed about unseen and often unstated encoding principles. This paper reviews task demands implicit in children's books and find the models of orthographic learning in an Indic writing system must go beyond a focus on intra-symbol cues, the size of the symbol set, and the nature of sound-symbol mapping. The child-directed print corpus also shows a substantial demand for recognition of multimorphemic words. Since children encounter an ever-expanding variety of such words in the books they read, it is essential to mount systematic studies on morphological development. At a methodological level, this exploratory study shows the limitations of building models of literacy development when real world encounters with a writing system are not adequately taken into account. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Some recent studies demonstrated a lexical processing difference between L1 and L2. In a lexical decision task, masked word primes had an inhibitory or no effect on the identification of their neighbor targets (e.g., reason-SEASON) in L1, but they produced a faciliatory priming effect in L2. The present study attempted to replicate this finding with materials that were developed with familiarity, length, and frequency considerations. Native and nonnative speakers of English were tested on 40 English targets that were preceded by prime words that were their neighbors or orthographically unrelated. The results replicated previous findings. Nonnative speakers showed a significant priming effect of 63 ms but native speakers produced a nonsignificant effect of 11 ms. This finding suggested that words in the L2 lexicon seemed to recognize and interact with each other only on the basis of orthographic overlap (thus orthographic friends). They did not seem to do so on the basis of lexical status (thus lexical strangers), i.e., showing little lexical interaction or competition. Current explanations of this intriguing L1-L2 difference are discussed. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

The present study is a phonological analysis of the segments and tones of the Tawrã language (ISO 69-3: mhu; Glottolog: Diga1241), a Sino-Tibetan language spoken in Arunachal Pradesh, India, and in Tibet, China. This paper, the first collaboration between a Tawrã-speaking non-linguist and a non-Tawrã-speaking linguist, attempts to clear up some confusion in the existing literature. For example, previous studies did not note that stop codas /-p, -k/ are in free variation with glides [-w, -j, ɰ], and that the morpheme, rather than the syllable, is the tone-bearing unit. Acoustic analyses provide justification for the phonemic representation of the vowels and the tones. Finally, the paper is designed to introduce Tawrã speakers to the recently standardized (2020) orthography, and to show how the letters and letter combinations function together as a system. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Turkic conquest and rule of China since 386 CE for nearly two hundred years had exerted its profound and long-lasting influence on many levels of Chinese society. Turkic sinification policy had induced the Xianbei National Language (XNL), which was Turkic language with selected set of Chinese characters for phonetic spelling. XNL, being spelt in Chinese characters, managed to function in Turkic-Chinese code-mixing in the bilingual communities as evidenced in bianwen 變文. Because of the Turkic politico-socio-economical dominance, some the Turkic elements in the code-mixing eventually gained prominance and have become permanent part of the northern vernacular, predecessor of modern Mandarin. This paper discusses twelve such Turkic-rooted verbal functional expressions: (1). The causative-passive qu 取 ; (2). Transitive passive sha 殺 , sha 煞 , si 死 ; (3). Causative dou 鬥 , dou 逗 ; (4). Continuative hai 還 , que 卻 ; (5). Resultative que 卻 ; (6). Reflexive nə 呢 (7). Positive indirective mo shi 莫是 ; (8). Negative indirective bu dao 不道 ; (9). Future participle cai 才 , cai 纔 ; (10). Conditional yao shi 要是 , yao 要 , yao bu shi 要不是 ; (11). INDUCE-base nong 弄 ; (12). The speech quote verb dao 道. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Although French plural spelling has been studied extensively, the complexity of factors affecting the learning of French plural spelling are not yet fully explained, namely on the level of adjectival and verbal plural. This study investigates spelling profiles of French plural markers of 228 multilingual grade 5 pupils with French taught as a foreign language. Three analyses on the learner performances of plural spelling in nouns, verbs and pre- and postnominal attributive adjectives were conducted (1) to detect the pupils' spelling profiles of plural marking on the basis of the performances in the pretest, (2) to test the profiles against two psycholinguistic theories, and (3) to evaluate the impact of the training on each spelling profile in the posttest. The first analysis confirms the existing literature that pupils' learning of French plural is not random but ordered and emphasizes the role of the position for adjectives (pre- or postnominal) on correct plural spelling. The second analysis reveals the theoretical difficulties of predicting spelling of adjectival and verbal plural. The third analysis shows that strong and poor spellers both benefit from a morphosyntactic training and provides transparency and traceability of the learning trajectories. Together, the descriptive analyses reveal clear patterns of intra-individual spelling profiles. They point to a need for further research in those areas that have empirically provided the most inconsistent results to date and that are not supported by the theories: verbs and adjectives. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Can a lack of grammatical knowledge alone be held accountable for the spelling errors that are made for homophonous verb forms and do these errors occur because spellers do not apply their grammatical knowledge? Three experiments with secondary school pupils were conducted on Dutch weak prefix verbs. The results confirmed that pupils made many spelling errors and also have great problems identifying the verb forms' functions. Moreover, a direct correlation was revealed between a pupil's identification of the form's grammatical function and its spelling. These results indicate that many errors result from pupils' inability to determine the grammatical functions of the forms. If pupils know the form's function, they are more likely to also spell the form correctly. If they do not, they often choose the form's homophone, especially if the homophone is more frequent than the target form. Spelling education thus needs a strong grammatical basis. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

This paper discusses the impact of several spelling changes in Croatian on the level of the literacy of native speakers. Since 1986, there have been five official recommendations for usage that pertain to five different orthographic manuals. This research focuses on three spelling points with considerable identity-related repercussions among the public and the media, which are sometimes named the spelling symbols of Croatian. A questionnaire-survey comprised of 36 tests was completed among 1063 students on a technical study programme each year for eight consecutive academic years. Eight generations of first-year undergraduates, who do not study language in an educational setting, have accepted the new spellings, contingent on a frequency principle. The more frequent a spelling variant occurs, the less the chance that the new spelling variant is accepted, and vice versa. Given the lack of established and enduring spelling norms, combined with ideological oppositions between the old and new spelling forms, students have been guided mainly by their capacity to write the most common form. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

The present study examines unintentional spelling errors on past participles produced by Flemish teenagers in private online writing. Previous psycholinguistic research on verb spelling errors in Dutch mainly focused on identical homophones (Bosman 2005; Frisson & Sandra 2002; Sandra et al. 1999). The present study, however, deals with past participles that are only partially homophonous with other forms in the inflectional paradigm and investigates whether the spelling of these verbs is affected by whole-word frequency, paradigmatic and bigram support for the correct spelling and the token frequency of the past participles' morphological family. The error rates reflect the effect of both paradigmatic and bigram support. Moreover, the unique database makes it possible to analyze the impact of three social factors (Gender, Educational track and Age). Our results reveal an effect on the error rates of all social variables. Finally, these social factors do not interact with paradigmatic and bigram support. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

That "script follows religion" is well known. Missionary activities by Christian, Manichaean and Islamic, and Buddhist and Hindu proselytizers brought literacy, in alphabetic, abjadic, and abugidic scripts respectively, to previously non-literate communities in Europe, Asia and Africa, and South and Southeast Asia respectively. Judaism, however, did not proselytize; instead, it "wandered," bringing Jewish communities throughout Europe and a good part of Asia, to lands that were already literate thanks to those earlier missionaries. Jewish languages emerged when diaspora communities adopted vernaculars altered on the basis of the culture-languages Hebrew and Aramaic. Such communities treasured their Hebrew and Aramaic literacies and often wrote the vernaculars using Hebrew script. The Hebrew letters denote consonants only, but the Jewish languages usually have more than 22 consonants and a number of vowels. Medieval Hebrew scholars devised vowels marks, used almost exclusively in sacred texts, but most Jewish languages barely use them. Unlike the other missionary scripts, Hebrew-script orthographies were often influenced by the indigenous orthographies they encountered. Exploring those influences needs an abbreviated account of the development of Hebrew orthography from its second-millennium bce forebears. A few examples follow of the adaptations of Hebrew script to Jewish languages, and various commonalities are found among such adaptations that probably emerged independently with little contact between speakers of the various languages. The question arises as to whether similar divergences and commonalities are found in other scripts spread in Scriptural contexts. That they are generally not reflects the difference between scripts arriving in non-literate versus literate surroundings. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

The processing fluency hypothesis proposes that listeners' perceived difficulty processing the speech of L2 speakers (called comprehensibility/processing fluency) leads them to downgrade those speakers socially. In this paper, we investigate this relationship, focusing on context-specificity. L1-English listeners provided comprehensibility and social evaluation ratings of L1-Korean speakers speaking English, while an orthographic depiction of the speech either appeared alongside the audio or did not, a manipulation aiming to affect comprehensibility. Varying orthography between subjects, Experiment 1 found that orthography resulted in greater comprehensibility, but not more positive social evaluations. Experiment 2 manipulated orthography within subjects, varying context: orthography trials were presented first or last. Comprehensibility and social evaluation ratings were related only when orthography was first, suggesting a conditional, asymmetrical relationship where listeners more readily downgrade than upgrade the same speaker when orthography changes. Our results highlight the context-dependent nature of these constructs, limiting the generalizability of the processing fluency hypothesis. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

This article describes the steps and results of the lemmatization of the derived anomalous verbs of Old English. The data have been retrieved from The Dictionary of Old English Web Corpus, searched through the lexical database from the Nerthus Project called Norna. The methodology comprises several steps combining automatic searches on the lemmatizer and manual revision. Part of the results, including the verbs starting with the letters A to H, are compared with the Dictionary of Old English, while the rest of the lemmas are checked with the standard Old English dictionaries (Clark-Hall, Sweet and Bosworth-Toller). The discussion leads to the conclusion that the lemmatization of the verbs of Old English, a language with a remarkable degree of spelling variation, requires considerable manual revision. However, the progressive improvement of automatic searches, based on the comparison of the initial results with the available lexicographical sources, minimizes the need for manual adjustment. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

The concept of schriftdenken describes how the knowledge of a writing system in use guides the creation of a writing system for a yet to be standardized language. Trubetz-koy described this effect with reference to the invention of the Glagolitic alphabet in the 9th century with Greek as the reference writing system. This paper demonstrates schriftdenken and measures to increase orthographic differences in two writing systems with a relatively young history: Luxembourgish (a Germanic language) and Rusyn (a Slavic language). In the Luxembourgish context, schriftdenken and orthographic separation are revealed by the historical context, whereas in the Rusyn context, both practices are related to different geographic contact situations in the countries where Rusyn is spoken and written. The reference languages for Luxembourgish are German, French and Dutch; for Rusyn, they are Russian, Ukrainian, Church Slavonic, Polish and Slovak. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

The paper investigates Turkish texts from heritage speakers of Turkish in Germany in a pseudo-longitudinal setting, looking at pupils' texts from the 5th, 7th, 10th and 12th grades. Two types of dynamics are identified in the advanced acquisition of Turkish orthography in the heritage context. One is the dynamic of language contact, where in certain areas of the orthography, we find a re-interpretation of Turkish principles according to the German model. However, this changes as the pupils grow up. The second dynamic is the heritage situation. The heritage situation on one side leads to the establishment of new practices, and it also leads to a higher degree of variability of spelling solutions in those areas, where the orthographic system of Turkish poses challenges to every writer, whether monolingual and growing up in Turkey or heritage speaker. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Practices of word segmentation in French and Moroccan Arabic by beginning and advanced bilingual writers in two historically and linguistically divergent settings are analysed in a threefold perspective: (1) In the different sociocultural contexts of linguistically heterogeneous France in the 1870's and a town with remarkable immigration from Morocco in Germany in 2000, dictations constitute monolingual settings of language policy and normativity; (2) structurally, open and closed spellings of (clitic) function and content words indicate constraints of different orthographies, focussing either phonology or morphosyntax; (3) in the framework of contact linguistics, bilingual students write in one of their languages (French, Moroccan Arabic) with resources of other languages (like Breton, German, Classical Arabic). The results show that the students' writings are influenced by graphematic structures not directly related to the language dictated. In French Brittany, a great importance of closed spellings may be supported by the agglutinative feature of the Breton language, while the apostrophe as a striking feature of French orthography is used primarily, but often only emblematically, by the students in Gascony. Moroccan Arabic writers in Germany are influenced indirectly by their first school language, German, in the way they mark word boundaries in prepositional phrases (PP) and imperfective verb forms. Classical Arabic, however, remains of marginal influence although both varieties are historically and structurally closely related. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

We present a correlational analysis in which we study the association between orthographic or typographical marks and the novelty of a term in a diachronic press corpus. Our question was if any pattern can be observed in the evolution of the percentage of times a new word is marked and if such percentage declines as the word undergoes a process of lexicalization. We studied a sample of 40 neologisms from the domain of economics used in 4 Spanish newspaper of wide circulation during the period 2006-2016, which includes the onset of Spanish economic crisis. Results, obtained from 41,695 contexts of usage, indicate a tendency of the marks to descend with time. However, this tendency is not statistically significant. Moreover, not all types of neologims behave in the same way, as some are more prone to their assimilation than others. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

This paper argues for pragmatism rather than linguistic purity in orthography design for endangered Indigenous languages such as Blackfoot, emphasizing the need to see orthography standardization as a dynamic process rather than a static result. It explores the ongoing lack of community agreement about the best way to write the Blackfoot language and lack of widespread proficiency in the use of its standard orthography, and then describes ways in which this is mitigated in the Blackfoot Language Resources and Digital Dictionary project, a suite of web resources created to support language maintenance and revitalization work. The website uses a combination of relaxed searches, alternative spelling fields, and multimedia content to increase accessibility of the resources for users lacking proficiency in the standard orthography. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

After over twenty years of debate over Cornish orthographies, recognition by the UK government according to the European Charter for Regional or Minority Languages in 2003 led to the creation of what was initially intended as a "single written form" for use in official contexts. However, the inevitable impossibility of finding a compromise that pleased opposing groups of speakers with differing ideologies meant that the eventual Standard Written Form (SWF) was pluricentric, comprising two "main forms". While these were initially stated to be of equal status, this has been hard to maintain since the SWF's implementation: with more speakers using Middle Cornish forms, the Late Cornish forms are less visible and commonly believed to be subsidiary. Drawing on such perceptions, along with learning materials and other resources, this paper examines the status of the SWF today and offers some reflections on this unsuccessful attempt at pluricentricity in a minoritised language. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

This paper addresses two closely related topics for understanding the highly fungible nature of written Japanese. The first is to consider the relative merits of the notions of graphematic representation and orthography with respect to the Japanese writing system (JWS). The second issue is to advocate an inclusive notion of intentionality, which together with the notion of conventionality, provides an approach to thinking about the pervasive nature of graphematic variation within the JWS. Accordingly, the principle Japanese orthographic conventions are outlined in Part 3, while the more substantive Part 4 presents a tentative classification of the various factors of intentionality that also exert considerable influence over contemporary written Japanese. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

This paper traces the employment of original Phoenician-Punic guttural graphemes, <ˀ>, <ˁ>, , and <ḥ>, to represent vowel phonemes in later Punic. Three typologically distinct treatments are identified: (1) morphographic, where the grapheme <ˀ> indicates the etymological glottal stop /ˀ/ (its original function) as well as vowel morphemes without specifying their phonological character; (2) morpho-phonographic, where guttural graphemes continue to indicate etymological guttural consonants, but now both the presence of a vowel morpheme and (potentially) the vowel quality of that morpheme; and (3) phonographic, where the same set of guttural graphemes serve to denote vowel phonemes only, and do not any longer indicate guttural consonants. The threefold division is argued for on the basis of the Late Punic language written in Punic and Neopunic scripts. Despite the availability of dedicated vowel graphemes, these are not obligatorily written in any period of written Punic. It is suggested that a typologically significant path of development may be observed across these three uses of guttural graphemes, with (3) the endpoint of a development from morphography to phonography. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

The Korean Hangul writing system conforms to the alphabetic principle to the extent that its graphs (i.e., its minimal orthographic components) represent phonemes, but it differs from the standard convention of alphabetic orthography by configuring its syllables as blocks. This paper describes the orthographic, phonological, and morphological characteristics of the Korean language and Hangul and reviews a selection of psycholinguistic studies that have investigated Hangul word recognition. In contrast to the results of studies employing Roman alphabetic orthographies, the reviewed evidence highlights at sublexical levels both the dominance of syllable-based processing and a propensity to process CVC syllables as body (CV) plus coda (C) units rather than as onset (C) plus rime (VC) units, which together indicate a script-specific decoding of Hangul words. Although the morphological characteristics of Korean have yet to be fully investigated, consistent with the fact that approximately 70 percent of the Korean lexicon consists of Sino-Korean vocabulary, studies have also observed morphological effects on Hangul word recognition. Based on the psycholinguistic evidence reviewed, this paper concludes by proposing to refer to Hangul as a morphosyllabic alphabet writing system, to the extent that the term appears to adequately capture the orthographic, phonological, and morphological characteristics of the script. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Berawan is a small ethnic community, numbering fewer than 4,000 members, in the Malaysian state of Sarawak on Borneo Island. There are four language varieties; namely, Long Jegan (LJG), Batu Belah (BB), Long Teru (LTU) and Long Terawan (LTN). This paper describes the development of the preliminary unified Berawan orthography by the authors, in collaboration with representatives from three Berawan communities (BB, LTU and LJG). Smalley's (1959, 1965) criteria for orthography development are discussed in relation to the authors' stage framework for orthographic development, which has been adapted from Rempel (1995) within the context of developing the Berawan orthography and the orthographic decisions made by the Berawan. Two additional factors for orthography implementation are proposed. The first stresses the importance of adequate testing, which is essential for both obtaining objective measurements to inform decision making and establishing a well-designed and effective orthography. The second new factor emphasizes the importance of having sufficient time available to learn the developed orthography. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

The grapheme and symbol x has been documented as relatively indeterminate and polysemic (e.g. Gale, 2015). Yet, various typographic, orthographic and other design choices make it particularly salient in the contemporary semiotic landscape. The paper starts by outlining briefly the history of the changing uses and associations of x in different areas of social life. This is followed by discussion of the typographic and orthographic salience of x, emphasizing its unique, unsettling, and 'foreignizing' effect on displayed language. The paper concludes by linking the salience of x with a global verbal-visual register that I have called 'globalese' (Jaworski, 2015a), and by briefly pointing to its origins in the typographic experiments of avant-garde art. Xxxxxxxx: Xxx xxxxxxxx xxx xxxxxx x xxx xxxx xxxxxxxxxx xx xxxxxxxxxx xxxxxxxxxxxxx xxx xxxxxxxxx (x.x. Xxxx, 2015). Xxx, xxxxxxx xxxxxxxxxxx, xxxxxxxxxxxx xxx xxxxxx xxxxxx xxxxxxx xxxx xx xxxxxxxxxxxx xxxxxxx xx xxx xxxxxxxxxxxx xxxxxxxx xxxxxxxxx. Xxx xxxxx xxxxxx xx xxxxxxxxx xxxxxxx xxx xxxxxxx xx xxx xxxxxxxx xxxx xxx xxxxxxxxxxxx xx x xx xxxxxxxxx xxxxx xx xxxxxx xxxx. Xxxx xx xxxxxxxx xx xxxxxxxxxx xx xxx xxxxxxxxxxx xxx xxxxxxxxxxxx xxxxxxxx xx x, xxxxxxxxxxx xxx xxxxxx, xxxxxxxxx xxx 'xxxxxxxxxxxx' xxxxxx xx xxxxxxxxx xxxxxxxx. Xxx xxxxx xxxxxxxxx xx xxxxxxx xxx xxxxxxxx xx x xxxx x xxxxxx xxxxxx-xxxxxx xxxxxxxx xxxx X xxxx xxxxxx 'xxxxxxxxx' (Xxxxxxxx, 2015a), xxx xx xxxxxxx xxxxxxxx xx xxx xxxxxxx xx xxx xxxxxxxxxxx xxxxxxxxxxx xx xxxxx-xxxxx xxx. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

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