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Article published In:
Diversity in Writing Systems: Embracing multiple perspectives
Edited by Amalia E. Gnanadesikan and Anna P. Judson
[Written Language & Literacy 24:2] 2021
► pp. 284–302

How children learn to use a writing system

Mapping evidence from an Indic orthography to written language in children’s books

| University of Oxford

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

Keywords: writing system, orthographic breadth, orthographic depth, emergent literacy, early literacy, akshara, child-directed print, children’s books, inflectional morphology, intra-symbol processing
Article outline
  • 1.A sketch of an Indic orthography
    • 1.1Symbol blocks and intra-symbol processing
    • 1.2Orthographic breadth and orthographic depth
    • 1.3Hidden encoding principles
  • 2.Written language in children’s books
    • 2.1A child-directed print corpus
    • 2.2The written language: Key characteristics
      • 2.2.1The language is morphologically rich
      • 2.2.2Morpho-phonological changes occur in many words
      • 2.2.3The word lengths are not that short
      • 2.2.4The symbol set includes low and high frequency akshara
      • 2.2.5The mapping of sound-to-symbol is mixed
  • 3.Developmental evidence on learning to read
    • 3.1Symbol knowledge
    • 3.2Visual word recognition skills
  • Acknowledgements
  • Notes
  • References
Published online: 21 January 2022
DOI logo
https://doi.org/10.1075/wll.00056.nag
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