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Article published In:
Orthographic Databases and Lexicons
Edited by Lynne Cahill and Terry Joyce
[Written Language & Literacy 20:1] 2017
► pp. 52–79

The BasisSpellingBank

A spelling database with knowledge stored as a lexicon of triplets

| Radboud University Nijmegen
| Radboud University Nijmegen

The BasisSpellingBank is the first lexicon where the spellings and pronunciations of words are documented explicitly and separately for all relevant word parts. Unlike earlier descriptions of Dutch orthography in terms of rules and underlying forms, the BasisSpellingBank departs from the concept of storage and the way spelling is taught in schools. At its core are triplets of phoneme(s), grapheme(s), and the spelling category(s) which describe the correspondences between them. The triplet notation provides a detailed, exhaustive description of Dutch orthography. It is a formal system that could be used to describe other alphabetic writing systems as well. By integrating information about orthographic rules and lexical storage, the triplet notation more adequately describes the knowledge possessed by fluent users. The triplets unlock exact measures of both forward and backward consistency, which opens up detailed analyses of spelling performance. The database provides new insights into spelling education and spelling complexity.

Keywords: phoneme-to-grapheme conversion, consistency, spelling lexicon, Dutch orthography, spelling diagnostics, storage
Article outline
  • 1.Linguistic contributions to an optimal spelling curriculum
  • 2.The BasisSpellingBank (BSB): each word is a string of triplets
    • 2.1The BasisSpellingBank in numbers
    • 2.2A univocal system of spelling categories
    • 2.3Examples of categories qualifying phoneme-grapheme relations in spelling triplets
    • 2.4Spelling category or rule?
  • 3.The triplet description compared to standard accounts of alphabetic writing systems
  • 4.New applications for research and development on the basis of the BSB
    • Application 1.Calculation of phoneme and grapheme consistency
    • Application 2.The BSB in the form of an enriched spelling dictionary
    • Application 3.Dictations with detailed analyses
  • 5.Conclusion
  • Acknowledgements
  • References
Published online: 19 October 2017
DOI logo
https://doi.org/10.1075/wll.20.1.04zui
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