Cover not available
Article published In:
Understanding Writing Systems
Edited by Merijn Beeksma and Martin Neef
[Written Language & Literacy 21:1] 2018
► pp. 3–25

From phonemic spelling to distinctive spelling

| Sussex University

Whether spelling is phonemic is only one factor in whether a writing system is suitable for a given language; another consideration is "lexical distinctiveness" of spelling, in two separate senses, and the importance of lexical distinctiveness grows as a writing system matures. Seen in this light, the increasing irregularity of English spelling, over the period when English has been a written language, has been a desirable response to the changing needs of the English-speaking world.

Keywords: lexical distinctiveness, phonemic spelling, ideal orthography, logographic v. phonographic, script typology
Article outline
  • 1.Diverse types of script
  • 2.Script types matter
  • 3.Few independent examples
  • 4.A proposed generalization
  • 5.An early assumption
  • 6.The assumption questioned
  • 7.Lexical distinctiveness or conservatism?
  • 8.Sparse orthographic neighbourhoods
  • 9.Supporting examples
  • 10. A reductio ad absurdum?
  • 11.Conflicting interests
  • Acknowledgements
  • Notes
  • References
Published online: 2 November 2018
DOI logo
https://doi.org/10.1075/wll.00008.sam
References
Andoni Duñabeita, Jon and Eduardo Vidal-Abarca
2008 “Children like dense neighborhoods: orthographic neighborhood density effects in novel readers”. The Spanish Journal of Psychology 111.26–35. DOI logoGoogle Scholar
Cahill, Michael
2014 “Non-linguistic factors in orthographies”. In Cahill and Rice, eds 2014: 9–25.Google Scholar
Cahill, Michael and Keren Rice
eds. 2014 Developing Orthographies for Unwritten Languages. SIL International (Dallas, Texas).Google Scholar
Chomsky, Carol
1970 “Reading, writing, and phonology”. Harvard Educational Review 401.287–310. DOI logoGoogle Scholar
Chomsky, Noam and Morris Halle
1968 The Sound Pattern of English. Harper & Row (New York).Google Scholar
Cole, Michael and Jennifer
2006 Rethinking the Goody myth. In D. R. Olson and M. Cole, eds, Technology, Literacy, and the Evolution of Society: implications of the work of Jack Goody, Lawrence Erlbaum Associates (Mahwah, N.J.).Google Scholar
DeFrancis, John
1984 The Chinese Language: fact and fantasy. University of Hawai’i Press (Honolulu).Google Scholar
1989 Visible Speech: the diverse oneness of writing systems. University of Hawai’i Press (Honolulu).Google Scholar
Frantz, Donald G.
1978 “Abstractness of phonology and Blackfoot orthography design”. In William C. McCormack and Stephen A. Wurm, eds, Approaches to Language: anthropological issues, pp. 307–26. Mouton (the Hague). DOI logoGoogle Scholar
Goody, Jack
1977 The Domestication of the Savage Mind. Cambridge University Press.Google Scholar
Goody, Jack and Ian Watt
1963 The consequences of literacy. Comparative Studies in Society and History 51.304–45. Reprinted in Goody, ed., Literacy in Traditional Societies, Cambridge University Press 1968, and in P. P. Giglioli, ed., Language and Social Context: selected readings, Penguin (Harmondsworth, Mddx) 1972.Google Scholar
Halle, Morris
1959 The Sound Pattern of Russian. Mouton (the Hague).Google Scholar
Hannas, William
1997 Asia’s Orthographic Dilemma. University of Hawai’i Press (Honolulu). DOI logoGoogle Scholar
2003 The Writing on the Wall: how Asian orthography curbs creativity. University of Pittsburgh Press (Philadelphia). DOI logoGoogle Scholar
Jones, Daniel
1944 The Phonetic Aspect of Spelling Reform. Simplified Spelling Society pamphlet no. 8. Sir Isaac Pitman and Sons (London).Google Scholar
1967 The Phoneme: its nature and use (3rd edn). Cambridge University Press (Cambridge).Google Scholar
McBride, Catherine, Xiuhong Tong, and Jianhong Mo
2015 Developmental dyslexia in Chinese. In W. S. -Y. Wang and Chaofen Sun, eds, The Oxford Handbook of Chinese Linguistics, Oxford University Press.Google Scholar
Mattingly, Ignatius
1972 Reading, the linguistic process, and linguistic awareness. In J. F. Kavanagh and I. G. Mattingly, eds, Language by Ear and Eye, MIT Press (Cambridge, Mass.).Google Scholar
OECD
2016 PISA 2015: results in focus. Online at [URL], accessed 7 Dec 2016. DOI logo
Peng, Dan-ling and Jiang, Hua
2006 “Naming of Chinese phonograms: from cognitive science to cognitive neuroscience”. In Ping Li et al., eds 2006: 346–57.Google Scholar
Perea, Manuel and Eva Rosa
2000 “The effects of orthographic neighborhood in reading and laboratory word identification tasks: a review”. Psicológica 211.327–40.Google Scholar
Pike, Kenneth L.
1947 Phonemics: a technique for reducing languages to writing. University of Michigan Press (Ann Arbor).Google Scholar
Ping, Li et al.
eds. 2006 The Handbook of East Asian Psycholinguistics, vol. 1: Chinese. Cambridge University Press (Cambridge).Google Scholar
Powell, Barry
1991 Homer and the Origin of the Greek Alphabet. Cambridge University Press (Cambridge). DOI logoGoogle Scholar
Ripman, Walter and William Archer
1948 New Spelling (6th edn). Sir Isaac Pitman and Sons (London).Google Scholar
Sampson, Geoffrey
1994 Chinese script and the diversity of writing systems. Linguistics 321.117–32. DOI logoGoogle Scholar
2015 Writing Systems (2nd edn). Equinox (Sheffield).Google Scholar
Schuessler, Axel
2007 ABC Etymological Dictionary of Old Chinese. University of Hawai’i Press (Honolulu).Google Scholar
Shu, Hua and Wu, Ningning
2006 “Growth of orthography-phonology knowledge in the Chinese writing system”. In Ping Li et al., eds 2006: 103–13. Cambridge University Press (Cambridge).Google Scholar
Snider, Keith
2014 “Orthography and phonological depth”. In Cahill and Rice 2014: 27–48.Google Scholar
Taylor, Insup and M. Martin
1983 The Psychology of Reading. Academic Press (New York).Google Scholar
Trudgill, Peter
2011 Sociolinguistic Typology: social determinants of linguistic complexity. Oxford University Press.Google Scholar
Yeshaya, Joachim J. M. S.
2014 “In the name of the God of Israel: Judeo-Arabic language and literature”. In Johannes den Heijer, Andrea Schmidt, and Tamara Pataridze, eds, Scripts Beyond Borders: a survey of allographic traditions in the Euro-Mediterranean world, 527–38. Institut Orientaliste de l’Université Catholique de Louvain (Louvain-la-Neuve).Google Scholar
Zhao, Jing, Li Qing-Lin, and Bi Hong-Yan
2012 “The characteristics of Chinese orthographic neighborhood size effect for developing readers”. PLOS ONE 8 Oct 2012; doi:  DOI logo.Google Scholar
Cited by

Cited by 2 other publications

Joyce, Terry & Dimitrios Meletis
2021. Alternative criteria for writing system typology. Zeitschrift für Sprachwissenschaft 40:3 ► pp. 257 ff. DOI logo
McClung, Nicola A. & P. David Pearson
2019. Reading comprehension across languages. Written Language & Literacy 22:1 ► pp. 33 ff. DOI logo

This list is based on CrossRef data as of 17 may 2023. Please note that it may not be complete. Sources presented here have been supplied by the respective publishers. Any errors therein should be reported to them.