This article was downloaded by: [York University Libraries] On: 10 August 2014, At: 16:34 Publisher: Routledge Informa Ltd Registered in England and Wales Registered Number: 1072954 Registered office: Mortimer House, 37-41 Mortimer Street, London W1T 3JH, UK Writing Systems Research Publication details, including instructions for authors and subscription information: http://www.tandfonline.com/loi/pwsr20 Akshara-phonology mappings: The common yet uncommon case of the consonant cluster Sonali Nag ab a Department of Early Childhood and Primary School Programmes, The Promise Foundation, India b Department of Experimental Psychology, University of Oxford, UK Published online: 10 Dec 2013. To cite this article: Sonali Nag (2014) Akshara-phonology mappings: The common yet uncommon case of the consonant cluster, Writing Systems Research, 6:1, 105-119, DOI: 10.1080/17586801.2013.855621 To link to this article: http://dx.doi.org/10.1080/17586801.2013.855621 PLEASE SCROLL DOWN FOR ARTICLE Taylor & Francis makes every effort to ensure the accuracy of all the information (the “Content”) contained in the publications on our platform. However, Taylor & Francis, our agents, and our licensors make no representations or warranties whatsoever as to the accuracy, completeness, or suitability for any purpose of the Content. Any opinions and views expressed in this publication are the opinions and views of the authors, and are not the views of or endorsed by Taylor & Francis. The accuracy of the Content should not be relied upon and should be independently verified with primary sources of information. Taylor and Francis shall not be liable for any losses, actions, claims, proceedings, demands, costs, expenses, damages, and other liabilities whatsoever or howsoever caused arising directly or indirectly in connection with, in relation to or arising out of the use of the Content. This article may be used for research, teaching, and private study purposes. Any substantial or systematic reproduction, redistribution, reselling, loan, sub-licensing, systematic supply, or distribution in any form to anyone is expressly forbidden. Terms & Conditions of access and use can be found at http://www.tandfonline.com/page/ terms-and-conditions
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This article was downloaded by: [York University Libraries]On: 10 August 2014, At: 16:34Publisher: RoutledgeInforma Ltd Registered in England and Wales Registered Number: 1072954 Registeredoffice: Mortimer House, 37-41 Mortimer Street, London W1T 3JH, UK
Writing Systems ResearchPublication details, including instructions for authors andsubscription information:http://www.tandfonline.com/loi/pwsr20
Akshara-phonology mappings: Thecommon yet uncommon case of theconsonant clusterSonali Nagab
a Department of Early Childhood and Primary SchoolProgrammes, The Promise Foundation, Indiab Department of Experimental Psychology, University of Oxford,UKPublished online: 10 Dec 2013.
To cite this article: Sonali Nag (2014) Akshara-phonology mappings: The common yetuncommon case of the consonant cluster, Writing Systems Research, 6:1, 105-119, DOI:10.1080/17586801.2013.855621
To link to this article: http://dx.doi.org/10.1080/17586801.2013.855621
PLEASE SCROLL DOWN FOR ARTICLE
Taylor & Francis makes every effort to ensure the accuracy of all the information (the“Content”) contained in the publications on our platform. However, Taylor & Francis,our agents, and our licensors make no representations or warranties whatsoever as tothe accuracy, completeness, or suitability for any purpose of the Content. Any opinionsand views expressed in this publication are the opinions and views of the authors,and are not the views of or endorsed by Taylor & Francis. The accuracy of the Contentshould not be relied upon and should be independently verified with primary sourcesof information. Taylor and Francis shall not be liable for any losses, actions, claims,proceedings, demands, costs, expenses, damages, and other liabilities whatsoeveror howsoever caused arising directly or indirectly in connection with, in relation to orarising out of the use of the Content.
This article may be used for research, teaching, and private study purposes. Anysubstantial or systematic reproduction, redistribution, reselling, loan, sub-licensing,systematic supply, or distribution in any form to anyone is expressly forbidden. Terms& Conditions of access and use can be found at http://www.tandfonline.com/page/terms-and-conditions
Akshara-phonology mappings: The common yet uncommoncase of the consonant cluster
Sonali Nag1,2
1Department of Early Childhood and Primary School Programmes, The PromiseFoundation, India2Department of Experimental Psychology, University of Oxford, UK
This study examined the reading and spelling of consonant clusters in Kannada among nativespeaking Grade 3 children (N = 62). The consonant cluster is represented by a CCV aksharaand while the frequency of specific CCVakshara in child-directed texts is medium to very low,the generic akshara type is exceptionally productive and frequently encountered. The CCVakshara is an orthographic syllable that encodes a phonological syllable in a matched mappingof akshara-to-phonology, but within a word, can also encode other phonological informationdepending on neighbouring syllables. The study tested whether children are supported betterwhen akshara-phonology mapping is matched and whether error patterns differ when readingand when spelling words with matched and mismatched mappings. The results showed thatawareness of the principles of akshara-phonology mapping appears to be available early inliteracy acquisition in Kannada, yet there are word level differences in children’s awareness ofthese principles and mismatched mappings are more vulnerable to error. The results are used todiscuss orthographic learning in akshara languages.
Keywords: Word recognition; Spelling; Phonology; Orthographic learning; Akshara; Kannada.
Akshara are the orthographic units of several languages in South and Southeast Asia. Eachunit is written as a symbol block. Five types of symbol blocks are available: (1) the vowelakshara (/V/), (2) the consonant akshara (/C/), (3) the akshara for consonants with theinherent vowel ‘a’ (/Ca/), (4) the akshara for consonants with other vowels (/CV/) and (5)the akshara for consonant clusters (/CCV/, /CCCV/). A robust finding about akshara-basedliteracy is that children take several years to learn the whole complement of aksharasymbols in the language (Hindi: Vaid & Gupta, 2002; Kannada: Nag, 2007; Malayalam:Tiwari, Nair, & Krishnan, 2011; Bengali: Sircar & Nag, in press). Cross-linguistic evidencealso converges on a clear effect of akshara type on performance. Akshara with the inherentvowel ‘a’ (/Ca/) and other vowels (/CV/) are easier to recognise, and akshara for consonantclusters (/CCV/, /CCCV/) are a more demanding unit to learn (Telugu: Vasanta, 2004;
Correspondence should be addressed to Sonali Nag, The Promise Foundation, Department of Early Childhood& Primary School Programmes, 231, C.H. Layout Sarjapura, Bangalore 562125, India. Email: [email protected]
This research was supported by the Newton International Fellowship and a Grant from The PromiseFoundation. We thank the participating children and their teachers, and Hemanth Kumar, Laxmi Sutar and Kala B.for data collection and data coding.
WRITING SYSTEMS RESEARCH, 2014Vol. 6, No. 1, 105–119, http://dx.doi.org/10.1080/17586801.2013.855621
Kannada: Nag, 2007; Bengali: Nag & Sircar, 2008; Malayalam: Tiwari et al., 2011).Factors that explain the slower pace of mastery of the consonant cluster include visualcomplexity (Nag, Snowling, Quinlan, & Hulme, under review), visual mis-sequenceswithin symbol blocks (Nag, Treiman, & Snowling, 2010; Vaid & Gupta, 2002),phonological complexity and phonological confusability (Nag et al., 2010; Vasanta, 2004).
While the body of literature described above throws light on what children know aboutdifferent types of akshara, few studies have sought to investigate variations in phonologicalencoding within a specific akshara type. An example of the variety in akshara encoding isseen in the word pair ‘rasa’–‘raste’ (essence-path). The first orthographic unit is the simpleakshara <ra> which encodes a syllable in < ra.sa> but the body of the first syllable in< ra.ste>. Further variations in the mapping of orthography-to-phonology arise from theunique ways in which the organising principles of the writing system align symbols tolanguage. We set out to study what children know about akshara-phonology mappings inconsonant clusters from their spelling and reading of a carefully selected list of bisyllabicwords based on age of acquisition and frequency counts in printed children’s materials.
The CCV akshara in Kannada
Child-directed texts in Kannada carry several CCV akshara. An analysis of 8549 wordsfrom 101 texts for children in Grades 1–5, returned 702 different akshara (Patel, Bapi, &Nag, 2013). Among the 50 most frequent akshara, 27 were /CV/, 20 were /Ca/ and threewere /CCV/ akshara. In the next 200 akshara which had a frequency count of more than 10occurrences in the text corpus, the ratio of CV: CCV akshara was roughly 4:2 (type countof 100:57), with the consonant clusters being either geminates or mixed clusters. MostCCV akshara had medium to very low frequency of occurrence. Importantly however, 40%of all akshara (285 of 702) were CCV akshara indicating that even though each CCVakshara is not very common, the generic CCV akshara type is. This common yetuncommon pattern of occurrence of the CCVakshara defines the nature of the learning taskfor young readers.
Instruction in the primary school years also defines the nature of the learning task.Typically, Kannada instruction does not cover the large register of CCV symbols thatchildren encounter in text. In an interview with Kannada teachers from five schools, weasked about akshara instruction. Teachers reported using akshara charts, copywriting ofsingleton akshara and discussion of the phonemic constituents in the akshara. One or moreof these methods covered the whole register of V, Ca and CV akshara, but for the CCVakshara, only a small proportion were explicitly taught, as has also been reported in otherakshara languages (Bengali: Nag & Sircar, 2008; Gujarati: Patel, 2004). Figure 1 gives thetype frequency for five akshara types, with a comparison of the number that are taught. Thehigh type frequency of CCV akshara in children’s texts is thus juxtaposed against onlylimited instruction. It would appear that a large number of CCV akshara have to be learnedimplicitly.
Principles of the writing system
A guiding orthographic principle in the akshara writing system is the chunking ofphonological information into symbol blocks. This principle relates to the visualarrangement of the writing system, its surface architecture. Akshara for consonant clusters(/CCV/, /CCCV/) join together more phonemic markers than the simpler /CV/ akshara,which ligature just two phonemic markers to form the block. While the /CV/, /CCV/ and/CCCV/ are typically divisible into distinct phonemic markers (e.g., /CV/ = /C/ + /V/), theblocks with the inherent vowel ‘a’ /Ca/, carry segmental information that cannot be pulled
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apart in this way. The entire range of symbol blocks may be described as orthographicsyllables, with most singleton akshara carrying two or more visually distinct phonemicmarkers.
A second orthographic principle is at the level of representation of phonologicalinformation. The mapping of phonology to orthography is determined by how the principleof transcription interacts with, and is accommodated by, the surface architecture of thewriting system. A common mapping is of one syllable represented by one symbol block,as seen in the bisyllabic word /yo.ga/, written as a two akshara word, <yo.ga>
. But akshara can carry phonological information in grain sizes otherthan the syllable. Bisyllabic /CVC.CV/ words like /muk.ti/ (liberation) and /shak.ti/(strength), , are written with two akshara <CV.CCV> where the second akshara ,<kti>, encodes both the coda of the first syllable and the whole of the next syllable. Thiscoda-syllable concatenation follows the akshara formation rule where the post-vocalicconsonant becomes part of the next akshara or symbol block. The writing system hasseveral other similarly explicit akshara formation rules (cf. Bengali and Assamese:Dasgupta & Sengupta, 2003; Gujarati: Patel, 2004; the Indo-Dravidian languages:Krishnamurti, 2003) and, depending on the neighbouring syllables, the akshara may bethe manifest unit of different sequences of phonological units (see Table 1 for examples ofvarious types of mappings using children’s names).
The akshara is therefore a dynamic unit, prone to re-syllabification when strung intowords. The surface blocks are orthographic syllables but an internal grammar structuresencoding in the akshara to represent both syllabic and sub-syllabic units. For younglearners introduced to the symbol set through singleton akshara in akshara charts, learningabout symbols as syllable representations is an intermediate step to knowledge aboutconcatenations in akshara strings. An important learning goal is to realise and abide by therules of akshara formation. Put differently, children may begin with an akshara-by-aksharaunderstanding of a contiguous sequence of orthographic syllables and in so doing, attend tothe surface principle of symbol blocks. But this may not serve well to access or retrieve the
V Ca CV CCV-G CCV-M CImplicitly learnt 0 0 0 73 132 15Explicitly taught 12 28 226 40 40 2
0
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Type
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Akshara Type
Figure 1. The relative frequency of Kannada CCVs in child-directed print lexicon compared to other aksharatypes1 with breakup of numbers taught explicitly and learned implicitly.Note: V = primary vowel, Ca = consonant with inherent vowel ‘a’, CV = consonant with other vowel, CCV-G =geminate consonant cluster with either inherent ‘a’ or other vowel, CCV-M = mixed consonant cluster with eitherinherent ‘a’ or other vowel, C = phonemic consonant.1CCCV akshara and akshara strings with am, ah or r are not included.
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phonological sequences encoded within. The more reliable insights for decoding,particularly when akshara-phonology mappings are ambiguous, are about the ways inwhich akshara are constructed in words. Children who have insights into the compositionof akshara sequences for different word types are arguably closer to a more comprehensiveunderstanding of the orthography.
The CCV akshara are particularly versatile in phonological encoding. The CCV aksharamay map on to a consonant cluster in a word initial position or when following an opensyllable. Another motivation is the rule of akshara formation for closed syllables thatparses out the coda to link with the next syllable and thereby construct a CCV akshara.These two uses of the CCV akshara can be seen in word pair /smi.ta/ and /tan.vi/( smile – delicate): the CCV akshara <smi> ( ) maps on to a whole syllable<smi.ta>, but the CCV akshara /nvi/ ( ) represents a coda + syllable <ta.nvi>.
The varied akshara-phonology associations, with analogous phenomena seen in mostother akshara languages (Bright, 1996a, 1996b), are theoretically interesting in relation tothe interplay between architecture, acquisition and processing in a writing system. We,however, could not find published studies that have examined knowledge about changeablephonological representations of the akshara in different contexts. Akshara literacy researchhas instead focused on the learning challenges associated with two aspects of developingthe orthographic register: density of phonemic markers (Nag & Snowling, 2012; Vasanta,2004) and the phenomenon of a systematic mis-sequence within the symbol block (Hindi:Vaid & Gupta, 2002; Telugu: Vasanta, 2004; Kannada: Nag et al., 2010). Mis-sequencesare an orthography-specific factor; for example, in Kannada and Telugu, vowels in CCVakshara are ligatured to the first consonant instead of the second in the phonologicalsequence such that the symbol block for /ste/) is < C1VC2 > (Bright, 1996a), constructed inKannada as and in Hindi, the vowel /i/ appears before the firstconsonant rather than after the second consonant making the symbol block <VC1C2> forCCVs /smi/ and /kti/ (Bright, 1996b). Frequency also influences akshara learning (Bengali:Sircar & Nag, in press; Kannada: Nag et al., in press), and can be expected to make adifference in the learning about consonant clusters in Kannada because many CCV aksharaare self-taught (see Figure 1).
Learning about multiple layers
A parallel processing of surface and underlying information is not unique to the aksharawriting systems (cf. Frost, 2012; Perfetti & Harris, 2013). In Latin-based systems letterlearning is quickly followed by use of orthographic rules for departures from 1:1mappings. In French, for example, children learn the liaison rule where a silent consonantat the end of a word is pronounced as the starting sound of the word that follows (e.g.,Sprenger-Charolles, Siegel, Bechennes, & Serniclaes, 2003). A more obvious case of
TABLE 1Illustration of mappings of akshara sequences to phonological sequences
parallel processing is seen in the Semitic systems (Hebrew, Arabic) where the surfaceform of unpointed symbols leaves vowel information unmarked while using the principleof transcription to organise words into consonantal sequences. Since the surface layerleaves phonological information underspecified, and since spelling is influenced bymorphology (e.g., Saiegh-Haddad, 2013), it has been shown that decoding is promptedby oral language factors. Parallel processing of surface and feature-level information isparticularly relevant to writing systems that are dense with visual details. In the Chineselanguages, for example, Tong and McBride-Chang (2010) have proposed that a charactermay be treated as a fused whole in the first years of literacy acquisition, with a moreanalytical processing of symbol components becoming evident in time. For the aksharasystems, there is similar evidence that beginning learners treat the /CV/ and /CCV/akshara as undifferentiated units. Later in development, de-composition of akshara intophonemic markers takes place (Nag et al., 2010; Nag & Snowling, 2012), suggesting thatchildren begin with a global approach to the akshara block before analytic, intra-aksharaprocessing takes over (Nag, 2011). A further specification of the akshara set is, however,essential to account for the ways in which the surface principle of symbol blocksaccommodate the internal principle of transcription, akin to the processes discussed inthe psycholinguistic theory of Language Constraints on Writing Systems (Perfetti, 2003).All akshara types are recruited to balance the surface with internal principles of thewriting system (see Table 1), though the CCV akshara in Kannada, with its block-likearrangements and multiplicity of akshara-phonology mappings, is perhaps a goodinstantiation of this specific phenomenon.
An influential framework that synthesises the transcription principle of writing systemswith the surface symbol is the Orthographic Depth Hypothesis (Frost, Katz, & Bentin,1987). Within this framework, the key issue for acquisition and development is not somuch about orthographic and/or phonological processing per se, but learning about themappings between orthography-phonology. The learning challenge for particular ortho-graphies is conceived in terms of the number of occurrences of orthography-phonologymismatches (Sircar & Nag, in press; Ziegler et al., 2010). Within this framework, the sizeof processing units showing orthography-phonology mismatches in the akshara languagesrange from syllable level units to the smaller units of body, coda and the phoneme.
One line of evidence concerning the nature of learning about the mismatches in akshara-phonology mappings comes from a comparison of more- and less-skilled readers ofBengali. Sircar & Nag (in press), using a Bengali nonword reading task, found more-skilled readers in Grades 2–4 drawing upon phonotactic knowledge for decodingambiguous akshara-phonology correspondences at the level of the schwa (the /a/ vowelinherent in the /Ca/ akshara). Less-skilled readers stayed focused on an akshara-by-aksharaapproach, not appearing to recognise that encoding is varied in the writing system andattention must be paid to the phonology of the language to decode. There is also evidencethat a reciprocal association exists between akshara knowledge and phonologicaldevelopment. At the item-level, explicit phonological processing is easier for thosephonological units that are represented by distinct individual markers (Prakash, Rekha,Nigam, & Karanth, 1993; Vaid & Gupta, 2002). At the child-level, more-skilled readersknow more about the phonemic markers in akshara and have greater phonemic-processingskills (Nag & Snowling, 2012). Together, this allows for a greater appreciation of theabstract scheme for transcribing sound segments in words, even when the mapping ofakshara and phonology is mismatched.
In summary, while the evidence from the acquisition literature on akshara languagessuggest that early orthographic processing is about learning the many akshara (just as letterlearning is in Latin and Semitic systems), it is also reasonable to expect that later
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orthographic skills are related to akshara formation and insights about ambiguous akshara-phonology mappings. In this study we report the data from an experiment designed tocompare performance on words where akshara-phonology mappings were matched for theCCV, with other words where akshara-phonology was mismatched.
Examining encoding in CCV akshara
We examined bi-syllabic words containing a mixed-cluster CCV akshara (i.e., not ageminate). Words with akshara that encoded syllables (matched) were compared withwords containing akshara that encoded coda-syllable (mismatched), (e.g., the akshara<smi> encodes a syllable in <smi.ta>, the akshara <nvi> a coda-syllable in <ta.nvi> ). IfCCV akshara that represent syllables are easier than coda-syllable concatenations then thisis evidence that matched akshara-phonology mappings support decoding of the CCVakshara more and the re-syllabification rule of akshara formation is less accessible. On theother hand, if accuracy is similar for both akshara with syllable and coda-syllableencodings, then that would demonstrate that neither type of akshara-phonology mapping ismore salient, and hence more accessible during word reading and spelling.
Also of interest to the examination of encoding in the akshara is relative performance inreading and spelling. Even if specific markers in symbol blocks or ambiguous akshara-syllable mappings are not recognised, the task of reading should be easier because it ispossible to arrive at the right decoding by sounding out known units and adjustingpronunciation to map to a known lexical item. But in spelling, accurate akshara cannot beused if specific symbol markers or akshara formation rules are not known or recalled. Wealso reasoned that if there are differences in the processing of the matched and mismatchedCCV akshara, then this should be evident in differences in error patterns on reading and onspelling of each set.
METHOD
Participants
Sixty-two native speakers of Kannada studying in Grade 3 (M(SD) age in months = 101.45(6.74), Girls 31) were drawn randomly from class lists in five schools purposively selectedfrom five districts of Karnataka in south India. Kannada literacy instruction began in thepre-school years in all participating schools, with 30% of instruction time dedicated to asecond language, English. Permission for the study was granted by the head of each schoolin keeping with practice for school-based research in the region. The children’ssocioeconomic status (SES) was computed based on each parent’s current occupationand educational level and possessions at home as reported by the child. Details wereavailable for 80% of the sample. Of these, 16.7, 70.8 and 12.5% belonged to the lower-middle, middle and upper-middle SES groups respectively, which may be consideredrepresentative of the SES groups in the districts covered. Twelve per cent of children weresimultaneous bilinguals (Kannada–Telugu) with exposure to English from pre-school. Therest (87.5%) were sequential bi-linguals with exposure to English at age three, on entry topre-school. General abilities were assessed using the Progressive Matrices (Raven, Court,& Raven, 1995), M(SD) raw score = 50 (5.49). We also confirmed from school records andteacher reports that participating children did not have a sensory, general health, learning,behavioural or adjustment difficulty.
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Tests and materials
Eight words with matched CCV akshara and ten words with mismatched CCV aksharacomprised the word decoding test (see A1 for the word list). In all test items, the CCVakshara was considered the target akshara and the simple CV akshara as the non-targetakshara.1 All words were bi-syllabic and the two lists were matched for token frequency ofthe target CCV akshara and the age of acquisition (AoA) of the spoken word (on WilcoxonSigned Rank Tests, z = −.448 and −.543 respectively, both statistically not significant). Fortoken frequency we used the corpus of 8549 words from 101 texts for children in Grades1–5 (Patel et al., 2013). For the age of acquisition measure, estimates were available from acorpus of 962 words (Nag, 2013). Average subjective ratings of nine native speakers ofKannada who were pre- and primary-school language teachers was computed for estimatesof “by when do children learn this word”, indicating one of five options: the first being“before or by age three”, the last “after age 10”, and three age bands in between in twoyear intervals. Words were made into sets of 100, and within each set, presented in randomorder. For each word, the AoA estimate was taken as the upper age of the age band, thus ifa word was placed under the age band for “by age five”, then the estimated age was takenas five.
Children were first asked to read the 18 items in the word decoding test and then tospell. For the reading task, words were presented separately on flashcards and for spelling,called out individually and also within a short sentence. The order of presentation of thetwo word lists (matched, mismatched) was counterbalanced, and all children attempted allitems.
We measured reading and spelling accuracy. Reading was scored as correct when thepronunciation was preserved. When the pronunciation diverged from the target, we codedchanges for (1) error on non-target simple akshara, (2) error on target CCV akshara and(3) error on both target and non-target akshara. These measures of errors assess difficultieswhen decoding the akshara. Spelling was scored as correct when the conventional spellingwas produced, with errors coded similarly to reading errors. A small proportion of allresponses (.03) were either not attempted or had an insertion of an additional syllable.These were excluded from the analysis and when computing the proportion scores reportedbelow.
RESULTS AND DISCUSSION
Word and CCV level analysis
We first examined decoding accuracy pooling across reading and spelling. Errors werecoded for whether the target consonant cluster, the non-target simple akshara or both hadbeen changed in the bi-syllabic words. Table 2 gives the descriptive summaries for theseresponse types. Overall, the children made 30.29% errors in reading and spelling. Asexpected, errors on the CCVs were more frequent than errors on the simple non-targetakshara, with a larger proportion of errors being on the CCV akshara alone. Thus, for theitem ‘shabda’ ( sound), a CCV error in reading would be /shaba/ and spelling <shada>( , both nonwords), indicating that the decoding was not in keeping with theakshara-phonology mapping for the word. Sometimes, children’s errors suggested anawareness of the generic akshara type for consonant clusters but a lack of recognition ofspecific phonemic markers as, for example, in these lexical substitutions during reading:
1In examples the target CCV akshara is underlined.
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‘rakta’ as /rakSHa/ ( blood - protection) and ‘halva’ as /hallu/ ( asweetmeat - teeth). Examples of errors on the simple non-target akshara are ‘sha.bda’ to‘sa.bda’ ( ) and praa.Ni (animal) to ‘praa.ni’ ( ); most errors beingphonologically close substitutions.
The accuracy rate was computed next for the key comparison of CCV akshara in words.If the word was misread or misspelt only on the neighbouring simple akshara (Ca, CV),these were noted but not included in the calculation for the CCVakshara. We first looked ata composite measure by taking the average of proportion correct for reading and forspelling in each word list. With one child at floor and 17 at ceiling on the matched CCVakshara list, and one child at floor and four at ceiling on the mismatched CCV akshara set,we had a non-normal distribution. We therefore decided to run the Wilcoxon Signed RankTest taking the difference in accuracy scores on the two lists and rank ordering them by themagnitude of difference. Five children showed no difference in accuracy scores betweenthe matched and mismatched lists and, as needed for this test, were dropped prior to theanalysis. For the remaining 57, there was a statistically significant difference betweenmatched and mismatched words, z =−5.087, p < .001. For children who showed a drop inperformance on the mismatched words the mean rank was 33.32, and for the rest 14.38. Ifthere had been no difference in the effect of experimental condition then the scores wouldhave been as likely to be greater than or lesser than 0, and also as likely to be as far from 0,but our results show clear effect of type of mapping favouring matched words. Putdifferently, children’s decoding in Grade 3 is influenced by the nature of akshara-phonology mapping, and is less successful when the additional process of re-syllabificationis needed.
Also of interest are the error responses on both CV and CCV akshara because thepresence of a mismatched CCV in a word implies that a neighbouring akshara is alsomismatched. To illustrate, unlike /praaNi/ which has a matched mapping on all akshara inthe word, <praa.Ni> (knowledge), the written form for /hal.va/ (a sweetmeat) is amismatched mapping both on the CV akshara and the CCV akshara <ha.lva>, with the firstakshara representing only the body of the first syllable. According to the mismatchhypothesis, when re-syllabification splits the phonological syllable into two (<body.coda> )then decoding accuracy will be lower than when the mappings are matched. We found
TABLE 2Decoding accuracy and errors responses in proportion scores pooling across reading and spelling
Measure M SD Min.–Max.
Words with matched CCVDecoding accuracy .74 .27 .00–1.00Error Responses:Non-target simple akshara .02 .04 .00–.19CCV akshara .25 .26 .00–1.00Both CV and CCV akshara .03 .06 .00–1.00Only CCV akshara .22 .23 .00–1.00
Words with mismatched CCVDecoding accuracy .65 .31 .00–1.00Error Responses:Non-target simple akshara .01 .03 .00–.10CCV akshara .34 .31 .00–1.00Both CV and CCV akshara .11 .12 .00–.57Only CCV akshara .23 .22 .00–.74
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evidence for this; the proportion of error responses on both the CV and CCV akshara washigher on the mismatched list when compared to the matched list (11 versus 3%).
Reading vs. spelling
A step-wise pattern of attainments in reading and spelling of matched and mismatchedCCV akshara was noted. Reading of words with CCV matched akshara was the easiest andthe spelling of words with mismatched CCV akshara the most difficult (see Figure 2). In aseries of Wilcoxon tests we further examined the reading advantage. This analysisexamines the performance of each child’s reading and spelling accuracy on the same set ofwords. Reading accuracy was significantly different from spelling for the full set (z all words
=−4.545, p < .001) and when analysed by type of mapping (z CCV matched words =−3.977,p < .00; z CCV mismatched words =−3.355, p = .001). Setting aside the children who scored thesame on both reading and spelling, the mean of ranks in favour of reading was higher thanin favour of spelling (all words: 29.53, 19.55; matched list = 22.97, 14.00; mismatched list= 26.26, 21.50). In summary, a robust reading advantage was found and though thisreduced in the mismatched set, it remained significant.
Our interest was in the error patterns on the CCV akshara when reading and whenspelling. Errors were coded when the first consonant (C1), second consonant (C2) or thevowel (V) in the cluster were dropped or substituted, or when the cluster was turned intotwo simple akshara (CV.CVor Ca.Ca or any combination thereof). Odd sequences (C2 aftervowel, C1–C2 interchanged) or substitutions with an unrelated CCVor CVoccurred as wellbut were too few for further analysis. Figures 3A and 3B give the proportion of the firstthree errors (on C1, C2, or V).
In reading, the trend was for the C2 to be dropped or substituted irrespective of whetherthe CCV was matched or mismatched to phonology in the word (90 and 61% of all errors
Figure 2. Mean accuracy (proportion correct) with 95% error bars for reading and spelling words with matchedand mismatched CCV akshara (N = 62).
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respectively). The C2 markers are off-line, smaller sized units within the symbol block,suggesting that visuo-spatial characteristics may partly explain why this unit is vulnerableto errors during reading.
In contrast, it is the nature of mapping that appears to drive error patterns in spelling.Sixty-one per cent of all errors in spelling the mismatched CCVs occurred on the C1,which was the coda in the coda-syllable concatenation encoded in this akshara. In thematched CCVs, however, the errors on C1 were only 19% of all errors, with the C2, and toa lesser extent the V, being the more vulnerable units. This pattern shows the salienceof the akshara as a syllable encoding for children with literacy levels typically seen inGrade 3. When akshara-phonology mapping is mismatched then the re-syllabification ofthe coda must be retrieved, and this is done with less accuracy. The results also support theview that the processing demands of the two types of akshara are different. In reading,for example; both matched and mismatched CCVs require accurate recognition of allsegmental markers in the symbol, but the mismatched CCVs require insights intoadditional rules of akshara formation thus increasing processing demands at this point inthe word. Similarly in spelling, accurate choice of akshara is needed, with akshara selectionbeing more demanding when the mappings are not a straightforward assembly of symbolsbut constrained by the rules of phonological syllabification in the language and the rules ofakshara formation.
Another line of evidence for the additional processing required for ambiguous akshara-phonology mappings would be if the mismatched CCV was substituted by two simpleakshara as the child’s attempt to give an accurate phonological account while strugglingwith akshara formation rules. This is what we found. The substitution of the CCV with twoakshara occurred selectively for the mismatched CCV, 11% of all errors in reading and 8%in spelling. This type of error never happened when akshara-phonology matched.
In summary, we examined the effects of different akshara-phonology mappings on worddecoding and encoding, and we used the akshara system of Kannada to investigateperformance of Grade 3 children on decoding words that either had CCV akshara matchedto phonology (syllable encoding) or not (coda-syllable encoding). We found evidence thatby Grade 3, up to 70% of all responses were accurate suggesting that the children in oursample were well underway to mastery of the organising principles of the writing system as
Figures 3A and 3B. Changes on the C1, C2 and V within matched and mismatched CCV akshara when readingand spelling, given as the proportion of all errors on the target akshara.Note: When vowels were changed to an inherent vowel, the error was coded as vowel dropped.
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well as the extensive symbol set of the Kannada orthography. We demonstrated thatmatched mappings were more supportive of accuracy, and in mismatched coda-syllablemappings it was the coda that was more vulnerable to error. Akshara-level error analysisconfirmed the results from the word-level analysis that there are differences in processingof matched and mismatched CCVakshara, extending findings reported by Nag et al. (2010)that children’s solutions for decoding are tailored to balance the phonological syllable withthe orthographic syllable.
The findings of this study extend earlier cross-linguistic descriptions of error patterns inreading and spelling acquisition in Kannada (Nag, 2007; Nag et al., 2010) and otherakshara languages (Bengali: Sircar & Nag, in press; Telugu: Vasanta, 2004) in two crucialways: first, we compared words that were matched for age of acquisition of the spokenword and token frequency of target akshara in child directed print, thus controlling for twoimportant factors that can confound interpretation of accuracy data. Second, we showedthat the nature of encoding in the akshara is an important factor to consider when analysingword level processing. In addition, our findings offer another line of evidence that theproperties of the writing system place constraints and thus shape the processes involved inreading and spelling (Perfetti, 2003; Perfetti & Harris, 2013; Share, 2008).
Orthographic learning in akshara languages
The akshara systems have been called extensive orthographies (Nag, 2007) because theycontain several hundred orthographic units. The analysis from Patel et al. (2013) ofKannada child-directed texts returned 702 akshara suggesting that earlier estimates ofakshara count in Kannada acquisition literature have at best been conservative (Karanth,2006; Nag, 2007; Prakash et al., 1993). Similar under-estimation in other languages maybe the case; the phenomenon of consonant clustering is a core characteristic of the writingsystem and it is reasonable to expect that the generic CCV akshara will be exceptionallyproductive. Learning of these symbols and the further learning about mappings suggestthat the structure of early orthographic skills may be different from later orthographicskills. An example of early orthographic learning is about the positional rules for ligaturingphonemic markers within a symbol block, such as the location of /V/ when constructingthe CVakshara. By Grade 3 children rarely, if ever, make errors with ligaturing. Discerningphonologically close alternatives is instead the learning challenge, such as making acontrast between long and short vowels or units in the nasal or liquid consonant setsavailable in the akshara system (Nag et al., 2010). A further learning challenge is thatneighbouring syllables decide on what the akshara sequences will be, as shown in ourstudy with matched and mismatched consonant clusters. It would appear that knowledgeabout the limits to the match between the orthographic syllable and phonological syllablemay be at the heart of gaining fluency about the writing system.
Insights into the isomorphic layers in a writing system are arguably triggered byinstances when phonological syllabification conflict with writing. Since different aksharabased orthographies differ in the number of occurrences of such orthography-phonologymismatches, it is reasonable to expect that the instances for insights into the organisingprinciples will be orthography-specific. For example, schwa suppression is a commonvariation in akshara encoding in languages such as Bengali, Hindi, Marathi and Gujarathi.Here, the written form of some bisyllabic /CVC.CV/ words becomes <CV.C0.CV> with thecoda of the first syllable represented by a medial akshara with an inherent vowel, exceptthat the inherent vowel is ignored in pronunciation (thus <C0>). All such instances ofakshara encoding could be dealt with through word specific learning, memorising by roteword-by-word how the akshara sequences ought to be. But most often, conditional rules
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decide the phonological encoding in the akshara, and thus it could also be that childrenabstract the rules of balancing the surface and internal principles, forming akshara tocapture the phonology in legal akshara strings.
Nag (2011) has proposed the strategic phase of akshara learning to account for theselective use of orthographic syllables in writing. Since akshara do not only encodesyllables but also a variety of phonological segments depending on the phonologicalneighbourhood, the elaboration in akshara knowledge must be about both the singletonakshara and akshara-in-context. This elaboration appears to occur because of distinctaspects of the writing system and the languages they serve. First, symbols in the writingsystem show high type frequency but low token frequency, such as the common yetuncommon occurrence of CCV akshara. Second, encoding in the symbol unit is variable,and some variations are governed by conditional rules; and third, the use of many symbolsare left to be learned implicitly. This suggests that the development of strategic aksharaknowledge may be initially through a series of item level insights about akshara in context.
A final point has to do with typology and the akshara writing system. A dominant view,particularly in akshara acquisition research, is that the basic unit of the writing system isthe orthographic syllable. An alternate view would be that the phonological markers thatbuild up the symbol blocks are the basic units, with the orthographic syllable (the symbolblock) being only an epiphenomenon of visuo-spatial arrangement and/or a preferred unitfor literacy instruction. This later point of view better explains the learning of theconsonant clusters of Kannada. Even though literacy instruction has a much reduced focuson the CCV orthographic syllable when compared to the Ca and CCV, a large variety ofindividual CCV akshara are commonly occurring and perhaps this is a factor for thesegmental markers to gain in psychological reality.
Limitation and future directions
This study showed that in a sample of Grade 3 children, there are word level differences inreading and spelling matched and mismatched akshara in words. But a limitation of thestudy was that it was with children of only one grade level and a sub-set of children were atceiling on the task. A more graded item set would allow us to better examine the readingadvantage seen in this study. Of particular interest is whether the effects of mismatch arestronger for one decoding task than another, and what the mediators for this might be (e.g.,partial recognition is supportive of reading more than spelling, but failure to recallsingleton CCV akshara is more costly for spelling than reading). Our study had controlledfor age of acquisition, frequency, length and broadly, part of speech. But there are othervariables that need examination. First, some CCV akshara are visually less complex thanothers such as /tri/ when compared to /stha/ as captured by a pixel count measure ofregularised symbol images: 7048 vs. 8809; (examples from Nag et al., underreview), and this visual feature complexity may explain differences in decoding at the wordlevel. Second, some phonological features may be more confusing than others such asnasals as the coda (see for Telugu, Vasanta, 2004), and we are yet to explore the role ofprosody in decoding. Third, position in the word might be important since word-initialCCVs might have the benefit of attentional bias or less interference from the vagaries ofmappings in the post-initial position (e.g., Nag et al., 2010), furthermore, later appearingCCVs may have the benefit of earlier appearing information about the identity of the word.Examining these (and other) potential factors in word decoding is necessary to add freshinsights about akshara phonology. Findings from such empirical studies may not onlyincrease our understanding of the pathways into mastery of akshara-based decoding, butalso refine our understanding of how children deal with the organising principle for
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phonological information in the Indic writing system and what is the role of implicitlearning in an extensive orthography.
This study also raises several questions. How do children switch from the processing ofsurface features to processing of internal details? Is this learning sequential or linked inother ways? Since typically akshara formation rules such as re-syllabification are notexplicitly taught, how then do children achieve the balancing and accommodating of thesurface and internal organising principles? Could it be that some children have a betterinkling about the internal principles than others, and if so, what cognitive variables bestexplain the individual differences in gaining these insights? Among possible cognitivedomains of interest to understand advancing akshara knowledge would be phonology,morphology, and morpho-phonology. Such a multi-factorial view of akshara learning isentirely consistent with a psycholinguistic framework of literacy acquisition (e.g., Perfetti,2003) and the findings would potentially have practical implications for literacyinstruction.
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