Written Language & Literacy - Volume 11, Issue 1, 2008

The present study employed a dual-language version of the Reicher-Wheeler task to examine the word superiority effect (WSE) in Irish-English bilinguals and L1 English speakers with some Irish language proficiency. Superior skills in written English would be expected in both groups. Forty-nine participants completed a word–letter WSE forced-choice task in both Irish and English. For both languages, and for both groups, an advantage was found for words over letters. The word–letter difference for English stimuli exceeded that for Irish stimuli, at 9% and 4% respectively; however this difference between the languages did not reach statistical significance. Performance did not differ significantly between the two groups, despite a trend suggesting a lower WSE in English for the bilingual group. The lack of difference based on proficiency may reflect the high frequency words employed or similar exposure to written Irish in the two groups, given the dominance of the English language.

This study investigates socio-cultural cognitive literacy predictors for reading literacy (RL), tested in 314 fourth graders from two different levels of social economic status in Lima, Peru. The following variables were tested as predictors: word decoding, vocabulary, motivation to read, reading strategies, intellectual maturity, gender, home literacy climate and social economic status. RL (reading literacy) was measured using an adapted version of the PIRLS Reading Literacy test. By using structural equation modelling, a total of 34 percent of the variance in RL could be explained. In addition to word decoding and vocabulary, motivation and social economic status were discovered to be directly predictive of RL. Furthermore, social economic status and home literacy climate were discovered to be important factors in determining the variation in other predictor variables. Intellectual maturity and gender did not appear to be significant factors contributing to RL level.

This study investigates a new writing system based on the Roman script that has been used by Israeli Arabs in Israel for about ten years. This system is associated with instant messaging (IM); people usually use it when sending SMSs or when utilizing any of the computer-mediated communication forms, such as Messenger. The paper focuses on the systematization and the typology of this writing system based on data collected from about 40 participants studying in the same school. The results show that most of the participants have used this system systematically, and that this system can be classified as a developing alphabet.

Two orthographies have been developed for Kabiye, a Gur language spoken mainly in Togo. The first aim of this paper is to provide an accurate historical summary concerning their development, teasing out some of the sociolinguistic issues which led to their separate evolution. Following this, I present the results of a comparative analysis, based on a text sample. I demonstrate five major types of difference: level of representation (shallow or deep), degree of consistency, dialect choice, diacritical tone marking and word boundaries. For each of these I explain by what criteria each party arrived at its decisions. Locally, I hope that this analysis will contribute to well-informed choices should the Kabiye orthography ever be rectified in the future. But beyond this, the Kabiye experience will be of interest to anyone developing orthographies in other languages. With access to a varied stock of case studies such as this one, we will be in a better position to refine the existing principles of orthography development which can then be applied cross-linguistically.

I argue that formal and ethnographic studies of written language could benefit from greater reciprocal engagement. Recent work on formal aspects of written language has made plain that orthographic typology can help us to understand readers’ phonological awareness as well as inform and shape pedagogical strategies. However, much work on orthographic typologies has not examined actual use of writing systems. Peter Daniels stated that writing can be “adapted … at will” (1996a:2). This notion of adaptability of writing poses problems for studies of writing systems that do not look at its actual usage. Through a cross-orthographic study of writing adaptability, I suggest that an ethnographic examination of writing systems challenges the definition of the term alphasyllabary proposed in Bright (1999). I offer that a focus on the relative independence of vowels and consonants provides a solid typological classification system that accounts for changes and current variability in writing system usage.

This short note relates to remarks made by Peter Daniels in his 2006 article ‘On beyond alphabets’ on diacritics which he defines as markers that have a consistent phonological function in the particular script. From examples taken from French, Czech and other languages using the roman script, it is shown that the principal function of diacritics is to set up contrasts among various graphemes. This is extrapolated to the Arabic and Perso-Arabic scripts, where it is shown that the dots above and below graphemes are in effect diacritics.