Written Language & Literacy - Volume 19, Issue 2, 2016

Children in primary school read hypertext for comprehension. However, children typically are taught reading strategies for linear text, while these strategies are not automatically transferrable one-to-one to hypertext. In the present study, a training group of 55 sixth-graders were taught four hypertext reading strategies (planning, monitoring, evaluation and elaboration) via mind mapping and the usage of a prompting paper-card. A control group of 29 children received no strategy training. We examined to what extent strategy training influenced children’s strategy use and learning outcomes: (1) number of pages read and reading time per text, (2) literal / inferential reading comprehension scores and (3) knowledge representations (relatedness judgment task and mind maps). At posttest, the training group showed higher scores on a self-reported strategy usage questionnaire, and higher comprehension scores as compared to the control group. Hypertext strategy training in combination with mind-mapping supports children’s hypertext comprehension.

Software systems convert between graphemes and phonemes using lexicon-based, rule-based or data-driven techniques. shotgun combines these techniques in a hybrid system which converts between graphemes and phonemes bi-directionally, adds linguistic and educational information about the relationships between graphemes and phonemes and provides estimates about the likelihood that the generated output is correct. We describe the components from which shotgun is built and determine its accuracy by running tests on two data sources, the BasisSpellingBank and celex, comparing the results to Nunn’s (1998) rule-based conversion system. shotgun converts phonemes to graphemes and vice versa with precision of 81% and 86% when tested on the BasisSpellingBank, and 80% and 81% when tested on celex. shotgun proves to be a powerful new conversion tool.

It has been frequently noted in the literature that content words need to consist of at least three letters; this observation is commonly dubbed “three letter rule.” However, a survey of the celex database ( Baayen et al. 1995 ) shows that there are (nearly) no content words in English and German that begin with two or more consonant letters and end in a single vowel letter. Words such as [bruː] are not spelt * but with an additional letter. These findings cannot be accounted for by the three letter rule but they are explicable within a supra-segmental theory of graphematics that includes graphematic feet and graphematic weight: a well-formed graphematic word consists of at least one graphematic foot that in turn consists of at least one heavy graphematic syllable. This paper offers a data-based survey in order to answer the question whether there is a suprasegmental minimality constraint for monosyllabic graphematic words in English and German.

In this paper, we analyze written sentences containing the German particles obwohl (“although”) and weil (“because”). In standard written German, these particles embed clauses in verb-last constituent order, which is characteristic of subordinated clauses. In spoken and – as we show – nonstandard written German, they embed clauses in verb-second constituent order, which is characteristic of independent sentences. Our usage-based approach to the syntax – graphemics interface includes a large-scale corpus analysis of the patterns of punctuation in the nonstandard variants that provides clues to the syntactic structure and degree of sentential independence of the nonstandard variants. Our corpus study confirms and refines hypotheses from existing theoretical approaches by clearly showing that writers mark obwohl clauses with verb-second order systematically as independent sentences, whereas weil clauses with verb-second order are much less strongly marked as independent. This work suggests that similar corpus studies could provide deeper insight into the interplay between syntax and graphemics.

Kickapoo who moved from the USA into northern Mexico since 1839 have written in a syllabary they identified as created by Sequoyah for the Cherokee. Possible scenarios for how the Kickapoo may have learned the Cherokee syllabary are examined. However, some authors have reported that the Kickapoo in Mexico used the less famous Great Lakes Algonquian Syllabary (GLAS), not the Cherokee syllabary. A new line of evidence is presented concerning the label that the Kickapoo use to name the syllabary, evidence that proves the syllabary they have used is the GLAS, not Sequoyah’s. Building on this evidence, new insights about the unexpected shape of some of the GLAS symbols are presented, along with clues about the creator(s) of the GLAS.