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This article provides an overview of the use of pseudowords—letter strings that resemble real words by adhering to phonotactic and orthotactic rules (e. g., fambo follows the rules of English phonology and orthography, but it does not have an actual meaning)—in written word processing research, with a focus on readers in alphabetic languages. We review how pseudowords have been used in research to isolate specific features of words to examine the cognitive mechanisms underlying various aspects of their processing, including orthographic, phonological decoding, lexical-semantic, and syntactic components, as well as to the way those empirical observations have shaped theories and models of word recognition. The overview also considers their broader applications, such as in studying non-alphabetic scripts, speech processing, and language disorders like dyslexia. By providing a focused synthesis of empirical findings, this article underscores the critical insights that research using pseudowords offers into the interconnected nature of cognitive mechanisms in language processing. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Research on alphabetic reading presents conflicting findings concerning the timing of orthographic and meaning processes in reading morphologically complex words. Chinese characters offer distinct visual cues for morphemes, enabling straightforward manipulations to examine orthographic and meaning processes. Guided by the Character-Word Dual Function model, we report four priming experiments that test how a reader's lexical quality impacts the emergence of orthographic and semantic priming effects in reading Chinese compounds. We conducted comparisons between native Chinese speakers and Chinese L2 learners, who vary in their quality of lexical representations. By manipulating the semantic transparency of prime-target pairs, we distinguished meaning from orthographic effects. The emergence of these effects was revealed by varying prime exposure durations. Orthographic effects emerged at shorter exposures for both L1 and L2 readers. However, meaning effects appeared at longer exposure durations only for L1 readers. These results confirm the generality of the orthography-first emergence of morphological effect in reading Chinese and suggest that readers' access to morphological meaning relations increases with experience. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

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]

The left ventral occipitotemporal cortex (lvOT) has been consistently identified as a crucial structure in word reading, and its function varies across subregions. Nevertheless, the specific function of the lvOT and its subregions remains controversial because the obvious grapheme‐to‐phoneme correspondence rules of alphabetic languages make it difficult to disentangle the contributions of orthography and phonology to neural activations. To explore information processing in lvOT subregions, the present study manipulated the orthography and phonology in a factorial design and used the fMRI rapid adaptation paradigm. The results revealed a posterior‐to‐anterior functional gradient in lvOT in Chinese word reading and specified that the functional transition from sublexical to lexical processing occurred in the middle subregion close to the classic VWFA. More importantly, we found that the middle and posterior subregions of lvOT are responsible for processing both orthographic and phonological information during Chinese word reading. These results elaborated the function of the lvOT in Chinese word reading. The present study disentangled the contributions of orthographic and phonological information to the neural activations in the left ventral occipitotemporal cortex subregions and specified the functional transition from sublexical processing to lexical processing during Chinese word reading. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Copyright of Tasavvur: Tekirdag Theology Journal / Tekirdag Ilahiyat Dergisi is the property of Namik Kemal University, Faculty of Theology 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.)

As the vernacular was re-assigned the functions that Latin fulfilled in the Middle Ages, close comparisons between these two languages stressed the urgent need for the standardisation of English. Seventeenth- and eighteenth-century England saw the rise of codification and prescriptivism, two stages in the standardisation process that succeeded the selection, diffusion and acceptance of certain linguistic forms. A large number of works were published within the umbrella of codification, including grammars, spelling lists, pronouncing dictionaries or linguistic treatises, each targeting different areas of the language. James and Leslie Milroy (2012: 57) claim that ‘just as dictionaries prescribe uniquely correct spellings, so handbooks of usage prescribe uniquely correct grammatical constructions’, thus establishing a parallelism between the two. Most dictionaries published during the Early and Late Modern periods declare themselves prescriptive in their aims to provide the ‘True-spelling’ (Preston 1674: title page) of the English language, as if there was a false or fake alternative, thus vetoing all other orthographic variants. However, there arises an issue in this endeavour: spelling had become widely standardised by the time these dictionaries were available, except for some of the remnants of variation that continue to exist today. This paper addresses the standardisation of colour- and theatre-type words in historical British English for the purpose of assessing the impact that linguistic prescription had, if any, on the speakers’ spelling habits. As a corpus-based study, the analysis relies on a close comparison of usage and precept that draws correspondences between these two dimensions of language. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Throughout the long history of Classic Maya hieroglyphs, a logosyllabic writing system used from the late first millennium BCE through the mid‐second millennium CE in southern Mesoamerica, the most commonly recorded phonetic value was the syllable u (/ʔu/). With over a dozen different u hieroglyphs, Classic Maya scribes had more options for recording /ʔu/ than any other syllable or logograph. Cognitive approaches to writing systems typically attribute graphemic variation (i.e., alternation between signs with equivalent linguistic value) to semantic differences like animacy or to non‐linguistic factors like identity. Distribution of Classic Maya u hieroglyphs, however, suggests that morphosyntactic context influenced which grapheme scribes wrote and when. This case suggests that scribal knowledge of Classic Maya hieroglyphs included ideas about writing's relationship to language. It also highlights the cognitive relevance of morphosyntax for a writing system's users as they differentiate among graphic signs with identical linguistic denotation. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Words that appear in many contexts/topics are recognised faster than those occurring in fewer contexts. However, contextual diversity benefits are less clear in word learning studies. Mak et al. proposed that diversity benefits might be enhanced if new word meanings are anchored before introducing diversity. In our study, adults (N = 288) learned meanings for eight pseudowords, four experienced in six topics (high diversity) and four in one topic (low diversity). All items were first experienced five times in one topic (anchoring phase), and results were compared to Norman et al. which used a similar paradigm without an anchoring phase. An old-new decision post-test (did you learn this word?) showed null effects of contextual diversity on written form recognition accuracy and response time, mirroring Norman et al. A cloze task involved choosing which pseudoword completed a sentence. For sentences situated in a previously experienced context, accuracy was significantly higher for pseudowords learned in the low diversity condition, whereas for sentences situated in a new context, accuracy was non-significantly higher for pseudowords learned in the high diversity condition. Anchoring modulated these effects. Low diversity item accuracy was unaffected by anchoring. However, for high-diversity items, accuracy in familiar contexts was better in the current experiment (anchoring) than in Norman et al. (non-anchoring), but accuracy in new contexts did not differ between the two experiments. These results suggest that anchoring facilitates meaning use in familiar contexts, but not generalisation to new contexts, nor word recognition in isolation. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

There is a long-standing argument about whether words or character morphemes are the functional units in reading Chinese. We propose a Character-Word Dual Function (CWDF) model of reading Chinese in which both characters and words are functional units that contribute differentially to orthographic and meaning processes in reading Chinese. Two masked constituent priming experiments examined one of the model's predictions by testing orthographic and meaning priming effects in reading Chinese compounds. The meaning transparency of the prime (a constituent character) and the target (a compound word) was manipulated to distinguish meaning effects from orthographic effects. In transparent pairs, the prime and target were orthographically and semantically related (e.g., 家-家庭 [home-family]); in opaque pairs, the prime and target shared orthography only (e.g., 家-家伙 [home-guy]). Exposure durations of the prime were varied (50ms and 216ms) to allow orthographic and meaning priming, respectively. We manipulated word frequency to reflect the accessibility of word-level representations. The results are as follows: (1) Sharing character level orthography facilitated word reading for both high- and low-frequency words, supporting the assumption of an important role for the character level in orthographic processes. (2) The meaning priming effect was found with the longer exposure duration and only for low-frequency words. High-frequency words produced rapid access, which was not enhanced by the meaning priming of its constituent characters, suggesting that the word functions as the primary meaning provider in reading. These findings are congruent with the CWDF model, which posits that characters are the fundamental orthographic units of written Chinese and that words are primary meaning providers. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Cognates are orthographically, semantically, and syntactically identical (or similar) words in two languages. The English and Spanish languages share more than 20,000 cognates, and many are essential academic vocabulary. Research has shown that cognates facilitate vocabulary acquisition and reading comprehension for language learners (when compared to non-cognate words). In Experiment 1, orthographic transparency ratings for 440 English-Spanish cognate nouns drawn from the Paivio et al. imagery norms were collected from 41 college students. Our participants were presented with lists of English-Spanish cognate word pairs presented side-by-side and were asked to rate the orthographic similarity of the pairs on a Likert scale of 1 to 7. The analysis of the ratings suggests that the earlier an English word deviates from its Spanish equivalent (its "point of differentiation"), the lower the cognate transparency rating it is assigned (extending the generalizability of the "initial letter effect" previously reported). In Experiment 2, we validated these ratings by having 43 new participants quickly judge whether English-Spanish word pairs were or were not cognates. We found that reaction times were strongly correlated with transparency ratings and the points of differentiation, supporting the usefulness of the transparency ratings obtained in Experiment 1. A limitation of Experiment 1 was that the cognate pairs varied only by page number, and the individual cognate pairs were not ordered differently. Additionally, we recommend a larger participant sample to include persons other than college students. Plain language summary: The number ratings for spelling similarity of English-Spanish cognate words taken from the Paivio, Yuille, and Madigan imagery types Why is this Topic Important? Cognates are words that are spelled the same or similarly, mean the same or similarly, and have the same grammatical part of speech in two languages. The English and Spanish languages share more than 20,000 cognates, and many are essential academic vocabulary. Research has shown that cognate words help second language learners acquire vocabulary and comprehend what they read (when compared to non-cognate words). Experiment 1. What did the researchers do? 440 English-Spanish cognate nouns from the Paivio et al. imagery word types were rated for how similarly the cognate word pairs are spelled. There were 41 college students who rated the cognate pairs. The college students were presented with lists of English-Spanish cognate word pairs presented side-by-side and were asked to rate from 1 to 7 their spelling similarity. What did the Researchers find? The results suggest that the earlier an English word differs from its Spanish word pair (its "point of differentiation"), the lower the rating the participants assigned it (this extends it generalizability of the "initial letter effect" reported previously). Experiment 2. What did the researchers do? We had 43 new participants quickly judge whether word pairs were or were not cognates. Our goal was to compare the results of ratings in Experiment 1 with how quickly these college students noted their spelling similarities. What did the Researchers find? We found that reaction times were strongly connected to the spelling similarity ratings. The position of the letters at which they differed, supported the usefulness of the spelling ratings found in Experiment 1. What were the limitations? In Experiment 1 the cognate pairs varied only by page number, and the individual cognate pairs were not in different orders. Additionally, we recommend a larger participant sample to include persons other than college students. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

This study investigated the role of orthographic information in the acquisition of non-native speech sounds by monolingual English listeners. Two potentially important orthographic variables were explored: Orthographic compatibility (whether the orthographic information supports or contradicts the distributional information) and orthographic familiarity (whether the native and target languages share the same orthography). Ten groups of learners were trained on either a unimodal or bimodal distribution of two length continua. Out of the 10 groups, eight groups were also exposed to orthographic cues that varied in their compatibility with the distributional information (compatible vs. incompatible) and familiarity with the orthography of learners' native language (Roman vs. Arabic). Following training, all participants performed an AX discrimination task to test their discrimination of the length contrast. The results revealed that, in general, the availability of either familiar or unfamiliar orthographic input which signaled the existence of a single length category significantly lowered learners' discrimination of the length contrast regardless of the auditory distribution. Further, the exposure to orthographic input that supported a two-category length distinction enhanced the discrimination of the length contrast irrespective of the distribution. However, the most significant improvement occurred when both distributional information and familiar orthographic input were compatible. Overall, these findings indicate that orthographic input, regardless of its level of compatibility or familiarity, may influence the acquisition of non-native speech sounds. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Copyright of Journal of Literary Criticism & Rhetoric is the property of University of Tehran, Faculty of Letters & Humanities 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 new combination Microsorum katuae (Brownlie) Sykes ex Heenan is provided for a species endemic to Cook Islands. An earlier designation, ‘Microsorum katuii Sykes’, listed in the Flora of the Cook Islands in 2016, is not validly published as the intended basionym is incorrectly cited in lacking information on the place of publication, date and page number. The species epithet commemorates Mrs Teremoana Katu, and to reflect the feminine gender the spelling of the species epithet is corrected to M. katuae from the incorrect masculine M. katuii. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

In recent years the amount of written vernacular Arabic has increased dramatically. But encoding an unstandardized language in writing is not straightforward and mechanical; rather, it is a complex process that balances practical considerations with ideological stances such as autonomy from the standard language. This study examines how writers of Tunisian Arabic (or derja) are navigating this elaboration process. Using a quantitative analysis of a 279,000-word corpus of print literary works written in Tunisian Arabic (2014–2021) and a 5.8-million-word corpus of internet forum posts (2010–2021), this paper explores how Tunisians writing in derja make orthographic choices to collectively position themselves in relation to the larger Arab world. The study finds that forum writers who have advocated for an improved status for Tunisian Arabic use more phonemic spelling forms—more closely representing Tunisian pronunciation—while those who have advocated for Standard Arabic are more conservative in their spelling choices. The authors of Tunisian Arabic novels and translations—pulled between issues of elaboration and readability—are a bit more conservative than the pro-derja group. These results show how writers in unstandardized or not-yet-standardized languages like Tunisian Arabic use orthography to express national identity stances in relation to supranational languages and identities. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

This article explores primary school teachers' views and practices in literacy instruction to support students' word knowledge development. This study provides insights into how primary school teachers with a deep interest in literacy understand and apply the literacy strategies they employ in their classrooms, and how previous professional development has influenced and contributes to their practice. Drawing from semi-structured interviews with six expert teachers, as well as classroom observations, the results highlight rich metalinguistic learning journeys. Themes generated from the data include: use of a range of tools and strategies to support students' linguistic understanding brought about by impactful professional development experiences; use of a range of assessment techniques to drive instruction; and a supportive mentoring culture for teachers' development of word knowledge. The findings suggest that experienced teachers recognise that English language learning can be a complex process, especially when it comes to the written form. Therefore, it was evident that the interrelationship of phonology, orthography, morphology and etymology played a crucial role in teaching for understanding of the language and its structure. This article highlights the importance of four linguistic elements and their role on learning English in the primary classroom, particularly in the context of spelling, writing and reading development. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

All leading models of visual word recognition assume a hierarchical process that progressively converts the visual input into abstract letter and word representations. However, the results from recent behavioral studies suggest that the mental representations of words with a highly consistent visual format, such as logotypes, may comprise not only purely abstract information but also perceptual information. This hypothesis would explain why participants often misperceive transposed-letter misspellings with the original base words to a larger degree in logotypes (e.g., SASMUNG, but not SARVUNG, is perceived as SAMSUNG) than in common words. The present experiment examined the electrophysiological signature behind the identification of correctly spelled and misspelled logotypes (via letter transposition or replacement) in an ERP go/no-go semantic categorization experiment. Results showed that N400 amplitudes for transposed-letter misspelled logotypes (SASMUNG) and intact logotypes (SAMSUNG) did not differ significantly across various time windows (until 600 ms), whereas replacement-letter misspelled logotypes (SARVUNG) yielded consistently larger N400 amplitudes. These findings reveal that the mental representations of logotypes are particularly resistant to minor orthographic changes, which has important theoretical and applied (e.g., marketing) implications. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

This essay reviews two recent publications in historical Greek linguistics. While many in university and seminary education learn to read Greek texts, little attention is given to pronunciation and even less to how the language may have been pronounced historically. The volumes reviewed in this essay reconstruct changes in the pronunciation of Greek in Judeo‐Palestine by examining discrepancies in spelling and transliteration. The books also have implications for sociological studies in addition to pedagogical applications. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

This essay pays homage to the influential scholarship and activism of the Jamaican literary and cultural critic Carolyn Cooper. In form, it imitates Cooper's code-switching newspaper columns and analysis of Sistren Theater Collective's Lionheart Gal, traversing the borderline between scholarship and autobiography, between Patwa (Jamaican/Jumiekan) and English. Cooper's legacy in championing the native tongue of Jamaica—not as bad English or noise but as a capacious language for both academic discourse and creative work—is to offer multiple ways to sound authentically Jamaican on the page. For creative writers navigating a global publishing market of anglophone editors and readers, this ongoing quest for a truer yet accessible orthography has both creative and market risk. But it also holds out rewards in reclaiming the Jamaican mother tongue and in developing an unapologetically Jamaican literature on the global stage. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

This article provides a review of previous studies that have examined the effects of orthography on establishing contrastive phonological representations in second language acquisition and presents results from an original study on Mandarin speakers' production of English stops investigating how the presence of orthography affects the production of phonological categories that involve allophony. English voiceless stops are canonically represented as aspirated [ph, th, kh] in word-initial/stressed onset positions but are realized as unaspirated [p, t, k] following /s/ and in unstressed, non-initial onset positions. The results of our imitation experiment showed that Mandarin speakers failed to correctly imitate the unaspirated allophones when presented with written input, and this orthographic effect was stronger with nonwords than with real words. These results are best explained by an orthography effect mediated by phonological awareness and prior linguistic experience. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Copyright of Verbum Analecta Neolatina is the property of Pazmany Peter Catholic University (Faculty of Humanities & Social Sciences) 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.)

Copyright of Journal of Theoretical Educational Science / Kuramsal Eğitimbilim Dergisi is the property of Afyon Kocatepe University, Faculty of Education 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.)

This paper is a response to a discussion note by Yuliia Normanskaya about consonantism in the first Meadow Mari primers (1870 and 1873). The journal "Ural-Altai Studies" previously published a study of the grapho-phonetic features of their vocalism (Klyucheva & Normanskaya 2015) and consonantism (Klyucheva 2017). An article on consonantism was followed by a discussion note in the same issue of the journal (Normanskaya 2017). It contains a discussion of some of our conclusions, in particular: 1) some objections are raised against the compilativeness of the Primer of 1870; 2) the conclusion about the Morki-Sernur dialect in the Primer from 1873 is confirmed by additional argumentation. Besides, Normanskaya made a clear conclusion about the dialect basis in the Primer from 1870: it is identified as the Yoshkar-Ola dialect of the Mari language. But this conclusion cannot be accepted. The localization of the Yoshkar-Ola dialect over a wide area from Yaransk to Urzhum and generally the classification of Mari dialects in the Normanskaya diagnostic table are doubtful; we also noticed incorrect dialectological data in it (especially significant for affricates). In sum, this was the reason for writing a detailed answer. This paper also provides arguments for our new decision that the dialect of the Primer from 1870 corresponds most of all to the Volga dialect of the Mari language. The authorship of the Mari primers of 1870 and 1873 is discussed, based on revealed new archival data, and some general methodological conclusions are made on the problematic point of dialect attribution of early Mari books. [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]

The argument that Indigenous languages require revitalisation through more pronounced roles across the fabric of society remain a social justice and affirmative action issue since 1994. The need for language development remains a remnant of the liberation project that commenced with the dawn of freedom in 1994. While political freedom and other liberties were obtained, Indigenous languages remained under the chokehold of English and Afrikaans. Arguments have pointed to a lack of zeal on the part of the government of South Africa to deliberately promote, develop and intellectualise Indigenous languages, but the element of strategy for implementation appears to have been forgotten in the tracks. What has remained unclear are the strategies to develop and intellectualise Indigenous languages. Such strategies have to accommodate the multilateral issues of social, economic, cultural, racial and linguistic diversity in the country. What appears fuzzy is the role that international, developed and economically strong languages such as English have in this endeavor. From an orthographic depth hypothesis point of view, this literature paper posits that Indigenous languages stand to gain extensively from a terminological, lexical and pragmatic association with multinational languages. A deliberate approach is required to understand the trajectories followed by already developed languages and the lessons that can be drawn from them in implementing standardization and revitalisation of Indigenous languages. Such torch bearer role of English can assist in harnessing the benefits that extend to advancing the national thrust towards inclusivity in diversity and meeting constitutional obligations in parity of esteem. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Copyright of Álabe is the property of Alabe 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 challenges faced by heritage language (HL) learners in mastering spelling and orthography are well-documented. Despite these documented difficulties, this aspect of HL linguistic knowledge has received limited attention from HL researchers. Beyond instructional implications, the study of spelling and orthography in HL speakers holds significance to building a finer understanding of the nature of heritage languages, since the development of orthographic skills is intricately linked to the knowledge of phonology and morphology as well as to metalinguistic awareness in these two areas. The study presented in this paper attempts to contribute to this area of research by turning its attention to orthographic skills of Russian heritage learners with English as their dominant language. The corpus-based research presented here categorizes orthographic errors in adjectival endings in hand-written essays produced by college-age HL learners of Russian of various writing proficiency levels and attempts to provide preliminary explanations for the source of these errors. While this paper is exploratory in nature and limited in scope by focusing only on adjectival endings, our results emphasize the need for further exploration in this underrepresented area to enhance our understanding of heritage language development and improve instructional strategies. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Copyright of Religación: Revista de Ciencias Sociales y Humanidades is the property of Religacion: Revista de Ciencias Sociales y Humanidades 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 lexical quality (LQ) hypothesis predicts that a skilled reader's lexicon will be inhabited by a range of low- to high-quality items, and the probability of representing a word with high quality varies as a function of person-level, word-level, and item-specific variables. These predictions were tested with spelling accuracy as a gauge of LQ. Item-response based crossed random effects models explored simultaneous contributions of person-level (e.g. participant's decoding skill), word-level (e.g. word's transparency rating), item-specific (e.g. participant's familiarity with specific word), and person-by-word interaction predictors (e.g. decoding by transparency rating interaction) to the spelling of 25 commonly misspelled irregular English words in 61 undergraduate university students (M = 19.4 years, 70.49% female, 39.34% Hispanic, 81.97% White). Substantial variance among individuals in item-level spelling accuracy was accounted for by person-level decoding skill; item-specific familiarity, proportion of schwas correctly represented, and correctly identifying the word from its mispronunciation; and an interaction of transparency rating by general decoding skill. Consistent with the LQ hypothesis, results suggest that one's ability to form a high-quality lexical representation of a given word depends on a complex combination of person-level abilities, word-level characteristics, item-specific experiences, and an interaction between person- and word-level influences. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

This article presents an empirical study on selected aspects of the orthographic performance of mono- and bilingual students in German. Particular attention is paid to the question whether a connection can be drawn between the orthographic performance of the bilingual students in German and their first language. For this purpose, a corpus is analyzed with data from approx. 800 test students. One group is monolingual in German, one is bilingual German–Turkish and one is bilingual German–Russian. A highly significant influence of Russian resp. Turkish on the performance to differentiate between tense and lax vowels is found. This corresponds to expectations insofar as in opposition to German, neither in Turkish nor in Russian, tense and lax vowels are distinguished phonologically. In other areas of orthography, this influence of the first language is not measurable or not to the same extent. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

The Prontuario de ortografía de la lengua castellana of the Real Academia Española is a fundamental text in the history of Spanish orthography. It includes the official orthographic system for Spain’s education, and it was the only reference in terms of spelling in the academic field for more than two decades. In addition, its pedagogical nature separates this text from the treatises previously prepared. For this, the purpose of this research is the detailed analysis of the thirteen editions of the Prontuario (1844-1866), paying special attention to the differences it raises with respect to the latest orthography of the Real Academia Española (ORAE 1820), that is the starting point for the drafting of the school treatise. It is intended to clarify the value of this work both for the history of Spanish orthography, in general, and for the history of the RAE orthography, in particular. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Copyright of Límite: Revista de Estudios Portugueses y de la Lusofonía is the property of Servicio de Publicaciones de la Universidad de Extremadura 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.)

Establishing the phonological Levenshtein distance (PLD) of words and pseudowords is useful for various psycholinguistic research applications, such as generating stimuli for experiments on language processing or analysing the PLD between erroneous and intended utterances. PLD2flex is a tool for establishing the PLD of (pseudo)words in pairwise, one-to-many and many-to-many comparisons of orthographic word forms, including one-to-many comparisons of (pseudo)word forms with databases of words generated from corpora. Specifically, one-to-many comparisons can be used to determine the average distance of a word to its 20 closest neighbours (PLD20), in analogy to the OLD20-measure for written words. PLD2flex makes use of the BAS Web Services API and several third-party python libraries. PLD2flex is freely available at https://github.com/FelixTheodor/PLD2flex. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

The automatization of handwriting and typing is sustained by both sensorimotor and linguistic abilities that support the integration of central-linguistic processes with modality-specific peripheral-motor programs. How this integration evolves when handwriting and, especially, typing is not fully automatized has not been well-understood yet. In the present work, we had two main aims: (1) to understand how spelling processing affects handwriting and typing word production in a sample of 9th-grade Italian students who have extensive handwriting practice but less experience with typing, and (2) to unveil if reading and visual-motor integration skills of the writer/typists have a role in integrating spelling processing and motor execution. Thirty-six 9th-grade participants handwrote and typed to dictation words and pseudowords of different lengths and orthographic complexity. To test spelling processing during handwriting and typing, we collected measures of latency (RTs)—i.e. the interval between spoken stimulus availability and starting to write—, of interletter interval mean—i.e., the mean of the intervals between consecutive letters—, and whole response duration—i.e. the execution time of the entire stimulus. We further assessed participants' reading and visual-motor integration skills to analyze their impact on the chronometric measures as a function of the linguistic proprieties of the stimuli. Our findings show a different pattern of processing for handwriting, the automatized process for our participants, and for typing, for which stronger lexical and sublexical effects emerged. Furthermore, reading and visual-motor skills interacted differently with the two transcription modalities unveiling a modality-specific role of individual skills according to the automatization of handwriting and typing. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

This research paper introduces "Word Sri," an inventive voice-based web application designed to enhance written Sinhala communication and originality. The application incorporates features such as a plagiarism checker, grammar checker, voice-activated punctuation, and intuitive voice commands in an effort to accommodate a diverse user base, including individuals with disabilities, language learners, writers, journalists, students, and professionals. The first aspect of the paper explores the creation of a user-friendly Sinhala Grammar Checker with Fix Sentences & Punctuation, addressing the dearth of effective language tools for grammar, punctuation, and orthography correction. Using a comprehensive analysis of Sinhala language components, literature, and a corpus of text data, the model provides students, academicians, and professionals with real-time error feedback and correction. The second aspect highlights the distinctive characteristics of the "Word Sri" application, emphasizing its usefulness for voice-based Sinhala content creation. Notably, the application includes a cutting-edge Sinhala plagiarism analyzer that uses machine learning algorithms, synonym and paraphrase detection to improve the originality of content. This research represents a significant advancement in Sinhala language technology, as it provides a unified platform for efficient voice-based typing, accurate grammar checks, and plagiarism detection, thereby facilitating effective written communication and originality in Sinhala for global users. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

This paper considers some assumptions about historical English spelling, in particular the idea that historical orthographies, in the absence of standardisation, naturally tend to a close spelling-sound correspondence. It focuses on the group of Early Middle English texts copied by the Tremulous Hand of Worcester in the late twelfth or early thirteenth century, and addresses the question to what extent it is fair to consider them representative of an archaising strategy, a product of antiquarian interest. It is suggested that, while the texts copied by the Tremulous Hand, like most Middle English copied texts, are likely to carry over some features from their exemplars, they reflect a competent use of English as a living written medium and are consistent with other twelfth- and thirteenth-century writing systems. Accordingly, there seems to be no reason to assume a specifically antiquarian motivation behind the Tremulous Hand's spelling choices. Rather, they reflect three basic features that are present throughout the history of English writing: conventionality, complexity and the use of substitution sets. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

National Library of Wales Brogyntyn ii.1 (Porkington 10) is a fifteenth-century miscellany copied by a considerable number of scribes, though there is no consensus on the exact number. In the copying of Sir Gawayn and the Carl of Carlisle, some scholars have identified two scribes, others just one. This paper analyses different language levels within this poem with the objective of determining the likelihoods of having one or two scribes for this section of the codex. This is the first study to offer a detailed comparison between ff. 12r-22v and 23r-6r and other stints undoubtedly copied by the same scribe of 12r-22v. It presents data extracted from the manuscript which ultimately reveal different scribal patterns in the poem with respect to palaeographical and orthographic habits, although these do not signal dialectal differences in the localisation of the fragments. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

This qualitative study employing comparative analysis method uncovered the similarities and differences of Tagalog, Bahasa Indonesia, and Bahasa Melayu languages in terms of orthographic, phonological and semantic features. The words in Tagalog, Bahasa Indonesia, and Bahasa Melayu languages were used in this study. The findings revealed that Tagalog orthography is a bit complex to understand for it contains more elements than the others. It possesses extra letters that are not present in the other two languages. Further, in terms of phonological features, the Bahasa Indonesia and Bahasa Melayu languages have an additional/ə/sound, one will really notice how Tagalog pronunciation is different from the other two languages. This is why when they speak, there is a distinct difference in the stressing of the words because/ə/are not stressed and are unaspirated. In addition, in terms of semantic features, affixation and reduplication play important roles. While all the three languages make use of prefixes, suffixes and circumfixes, they vary in the morphemes that they use. These morphemes can change the lexical category of the words and are subject to a set of rules unique to each language. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Copying a text quickly and accurately is important both in school and in daily life. However, this skill has never been systematically studied, either in children with typical development (TD) or in children with specific learning disabilities (SLD). The aim of this research was to study the features of a copy task and its relationship with other writing tasks. For this purpose, 674 children with TD and 65 children with SLD from Grades 6 through 8 in Italy were tested with a copy task and other writing assessment tasks, measuring three aspects of writing: handwriting speed, spelling, and expressive writing. Children with SLD performed worse on the copy task, both in terms of speed and accuracy, than children with TD. Copy speed was predicted by grade level and by all three major writing skills for children with TD but only by handwriting speed and spelling for children with SLD. Copy accuracy was predicted by gender and the three major writing skills for children with TD but only by spelling for children with SLD. These results suggest that children with SLD also have difficulty copying a text and benefit less than children with TD from their other writing skills. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

The objective of this study is to offer an overview of the orthography that appears in the columns on language in the Spanish national press from the end of the 19th century until the present day. For this, the articles that deal with spelling by Miguel de Unamuno, Mariano de Cavia, Fernando Araujo, Eustaquio Echauri, Ramón Carnicer, Emilio Lorenzo, Francisco Ríos y Luis Cortés have been analysed. The extensive chronology will allow us to determine what are the concerns about this aspect of the language and if they have varied over time. From an ideological perspective, it is intended to find out the position that the authors of these articles have taken regarding the norm, as well as the works that they have used as authority in their writings to establish normative judgments. The study will shed light on possible changes in the attitude towards spelling and the norm over time. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

The historic harms that tribal nations have endured are detrimental to the Oceti Sakowin or Seven Council Fires' literary tradition. Ongoing challenges exist in tribal communities due to U.S. government policies that took away the freedom to take part in cultural activities, participate in spiritual practices, and to speak one's language. The Oceti Sakowin Writers Society, formerly the Oak Lake Writers' Society, have discussed these issues during their annual writers' retreats, including challenges facing language revitalization and creating a contemporary orthography from a language that is originally oral. Important work remains for the Oceti Sakowin to continue language recovery efforts and the critical development of a contemporary orthography by the Oyate. These works are vital to continue the Oceti Sakowin literary tradition. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

This study investigates resyllabification errors made by Vietnamese learners of Korean, utilizing an L2 speech corpus known as "A Collection of Foreigners’ Korean Speech Data for AI Training." By analyzing the read-aloud and spontaneous speech data from 40 Vietnamese L1 speakers in the corpus, we discovered that the error rate was higher in script reading than in spontaneous speech. We propose the rigid syllable boundary in Vietnamese L1 phonology, contrasting with the fluid syllable boundary in Korean L2 phonology, results in a negative transfer, causing Vietnamese learners’ difficulty in resyllabification when speaking Korean. Furthermore, the orthographic rigidity of syllable boundary of the Korean writing system presents negative orthographic input for Vietnamese learners, whose orthography (Roman alphabet) allows for syllabic ambiguity. Consequently, speakers tend to produce more errors in script reading with such orthographic input than in spontaneous speech. We conclude the disparity between the phonological fluidity and the orthographic rigidity of Korean syllables contributes to failure of resyllabification among Vietnamese speakers. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

The growing trend to see the language of the LXX as an authentic example of post-Classical Greek may be extended to phonology and orthography. We can situate the phonology of the LXX within its historical Greek phonological context by implementing a restrictive methodology that focuses on transcribed names, the clusters of certain spelling conventions in relation to "early" and "late" books in the LXX, and manuscript-specific phenomena. We find that its language exhibits the same sort of phonological and orthographic features attested in contemporary documentary and epigraphic material. Codex Vaticanus provides the earliest explicit evidence for one of the notable phonological developments in the history of Greek, the fricativization of χ. It is demonstrated that the phonology of the LXX is right at home in its contemporary historical Greek phonological setting, and that it has unique contributions to make to the wider field of historical Greek phonology at large. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

The study investigates the relationship between lexical encoding and production in order to establish whether learners are able to produce a difficult contrast in words that they merged in their mental lexicon. Forty American English learners of Russian were tested on their production and lexical encoding of familiar and highly-frequent words with the plain/palatalized contrast in second language (L2) Russian. Results suggest that the relationship between phonolexical encoding and production is less straightforward than a simple mirror image and is strongly affected by the prosodic position of the target consonants. In word-final position, learners did not lexically encode the difference between plain and palatalized consonants but they strived to produce it, although not very successfully. In intervocalic position, learners' ability to encode and produce words with the plain/palatalized contrast was more accurate than in word-final position, which was attributed to the 'spelling trap' effect. Since Russian orthography employs vowel graphemes to mark the plain/palatalized status of preceding consonants, it appears that learners relied on these assumed vowel differences to articulate complex palatalization gestures. Thus, the findings of this study suggest that L2 learners can produce a contrast that they have not yet lexically encoded. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Copyright of Bulletin of Ablai Khan KazUIRandWL: Series 'Philological sciences' is the property of Kazakh Ablai Khan University of International Relations & World Languages 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.)

Copyright of Theory & Practice of Second Language Acquisition is the property of Wydawnictwo Uniwersytetu Slaskiego 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.)

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]

English is the language with the largest number of speakers in the world, when both native and non-native speakers are included. With an estimated 1,268 million users around the globe, linguistic variation is bound to occur. Research on World Englishes focuses on the study of this variation, though it has systematically disregarded the linguistic level of orthography. This neglect has operated under the assumption that most contemporary varieties must adhere to British English spelling norms. Nevertheless, recent studies on the Americanisation of English worldwide (Mair 2013; Gilquin 2018; Gonçalves et al. 2018) have brought the question of spelling variation back to the fore. The present paper thus analyses the distribution of the most distinctive spelling variants—i.e. -our/-or, -re/-er and -isation/-ization—in the varieties of the inner circle from a synchronic perspective. By means of a corpus-based investigation of English online, this study will outline the spelling usage patterns for the aforementioned varieties and will analyse the highly-likely Americanisation process in spelling on the Internet. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

This study aims at expressing the difficulties that the media have in the spelling of the Albanian language. More precisely, the written media, that is, the newspapers that are published in physical form and those that are only found in the online version. The unified orthography of a language, in our case of the Albanian language, is a term of the crystallization of the national literary norm in all the main chains of the phonetic, word formation, grammatical, and lexical structure. It reflects the current state and general trends of the development of our literary language. Today's orthography aims for further unification of the national literary language norm on the basis of the common forms that have been adopted and are being adopted by it. Given that the basic principle of Albanian orthography is the phonetic principle followed by the grammatical one, and seeing the constant spelling errors of the speakers and those who write in the Albanian language, we examined a daily newspaper, which has many readers and has a huge impact on Albanian speakers. In order to see the most frequent spelling errors, we will outline and analyse the wrong cases and give the correct forms based on the Albanian standard. Thus, from the results that will be brought, we will see the greatest difficulties faced by journalists of this daily newspaper, as well as their challenges on using the correct forms. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

The current study investigates pronunciation of Spanish lower limit and by intermediate L1 English learners of L2 Spanish (N = 31). Third- (n = 17) and fifth-semester (n = 14) learners completed read-aloud and picture-naming tasks. Each contained items with lower limit and in stressed position after pause or nasal, and in unstressed intervocalic position. Recordings were made and analyzed with PRAAT. First, target segments were categorized based on spectrographic evidence (e.g., contour and intensity of formants, frication, burst) and aural review. Subsequently, intensity differences between the target segments and following vowel were computed. Results show minimal production of affricates/stops, even in contexts favoring them in some dialects (i.e., stressed position after pause, nasal). Nevertheless, both learner levels did produce significantly more constricted sounds in this context than in unstressed position between vowels, as measured by both analyses, with post-pausal position leading to the greatest constriction. Significant effects also emerged for letter, with lower limit more frequently deleted or pronounced as a lateral, and for task, with the more formal task leading to greater constriction in the first analysis. No significant difference emerged based on learner level. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]