Introduction The problem - Orthography Testing

65 Appendix C: Morphology vs. Phonological Rules You can have your cake and eat it, too: An orthography that meets the needs of both mature and immature readers Keith Snider SIL International Canada Institute of Linguistics Lecture given to Orthography class, SIL-UND, June 29, 2005

1. Introduction

1 Mature readers need a constant visual word image Mature readers read by sight Venezky 1970, and do not take the time to sound out the words they read. For this reason, a good orthography maintains a constant word-image. This helps minimize the efort it takes for a developing reader to memorize the shape of each word. Immature readers need to spell words the way they perceive them to sound Beginning readers often sound out their words. For this reason, a good orthography bases the spelling of its words as closely as possible on the way the native speaker perceives the words to sound.

2. The problem

2 There can be tension between the needs of mature readers and the needs of immature readers. If we write words the way they are pronounced in order to help immature readers as much as possible, this can cause problems for mature readers. This is because the pronun- ciation of words changes in diferent environments and writing words with these changes means that the mature reader will not have a constant word image. Here is an example from Chumburung, a language spoken in Ghana. Words spoken in isolation koi ‘Koi person’s name’ kuŋu ‘head’ 1 This paper is an expansion of §2 in Snider 2001. Since I am the author of both works, I have taken the liberty of including in the present work a number of sections verbatim from the earlier work. I have also taken the liberty of editing some of these sections liberally to better it the present purposes. This has made it diicult to acknowledge which material comes from the former work and which material is new and so I have not done that. 2  This is true only for alphabetic orthographies. A logographic orthography, in which there is a one-to-one correspondence between a symbol and a word or morpheme, sidesteps this issue, of course. Words spoken in context kofu kuŋu ‘Koi’s head’ Notice that the [i] in ‘Koi’ changes to [u] in ‘Koi’s head.’ One thing that nonlinguists are not always aware of is that there is often a diference between the way a native speaker pronounces a word and the way heshe hereafter he perceives it to sound. In the case of this Chumburung example, while the native speaker pronounces ‘Koi’ with an [i] in isola- tion i.e., citation form and with a [u] when it comes before the word for ‘head,’ he doesn’t realize he is making this change. In other words, he does not perceive this change. The “trick” in developing a good orthography is to write words the way the native speaker perceives the word to sound, not necessarily the way the native speaker actually pronounces them. This is great for the immature reader. There is an added bonus, however, and that is that when we write this way, we are also able to maintain a constant word- image. Writing the way native speakers perceive the language to sound meets the needs of both mature and immature readers with the same orthography. Developing an orthography would be relatively easy if the pronunciation of the sounds in the language was stable. Unfortunately, as we see in the Chumburung example above, this is not the case. Sometimes, as in the Chumburung example just discussed, the changes are below the level of native awareness i.e., the native speaker isn’t aware that he is saying the words diferently. Here is another example of a change that the native speaker isn’t aware of, this time some plural forms from English. Voiceless Voiced cap – s cab – z bit – s bid – z buck – s bug – z Here we see that the native speaker of English pronounces the plural form as voiceless s when it follows voiceless consonants and as voiced z when it follows voiced consonants. In other environments, English has a contrast between s and z, as in sip and zip. However, this contrast is lost when the sounds immediately follow a consonant and which of the two sounds is produced is totally predictable from the environment. Although native speakers are aware of the diference between s and z, they are usually not aware unless it is pointed out to them of the diferences in the above words. At other times, however, the native speaker is well aware that he is saying sounds difer- ently. A good example of this occurs in the English negative preix in-. im – possible in – tolerant il – logical ir – reverent In these examples, the native English speaker is well aware that he is saying an m before possible and an r before reverent, etc. He is so aware of this diference in fact, that he prob- ably doesn’t even realize that these variants are all forms of the same preix, but rather he thinks of them as diferent preixes. So, some rules produce diferences that the native speaker perceives we’ll call these word rules, and other rules produce changes that the na- tive speaker does not perceive we’ll call these phrase rules. Since this is the case, in order for an orthography to represent only sounds that the native speaker perceives, we need to be able to distinguish between these two types of rules.

3. Data