Written Language & Literacy - Volume 27, Issue 2, 2024

Case and mood inflection (CMI) is traditionally regarded as a central feature of Standard Arabic, even though it is typically not graphemically represented. In reading, these inflectional suffixes are often omitted. This is the first study to empirically explore this omission in reading for comprehension. 18 native skilled readers read texts aloud while being audio recorded, instructed to focus on the content of the text. The recordings were analyzed for production of CMI. Participants produced on average 6.4% of all CMI expected according to standard grammatical descriptions, far below the prescriptive ideal of complete use of CMI. Furthermore, around one fifth of all inflected forms produced were incorrect. These results indicate that reading without CMI may be a more appropriate benchmark for reading proficiency than is reading with CMI, despite the latter traditionally being regarded as more correct. Implications of these findings for reading research and reading instruction are discussed.

How detailed is the implicit knowledge of regularities in written form? To address this question experimentally in Chinese, we examined a subtle feature correlation in which left stroke curving is obligatory in narrow arched-shaped components but not in wide ones, despite neither feature being lexically contrastive. While width did not directly affect curving classifications in a perception experiment, a statistically significant subset of participants gave significantly more “curved” responses and/or significantly increased them for narrow arches. In a handwriting experiment, the contrast in written curving degree was significantly greater for wide arches, and stroke speeds were also significantly more similar, as if they were planned separately. Together these results confirm that even very subtle formal patterns may become mentally active through experience with a writing system, and also suggest that stroke planning in handwriting shares similarities with the effects of prosody on articulation in speech and signing.

In German, written language interfaces with all major layers of grammar, including pragmatics. However, while the connections to phonology, morphology, syntax, and semantics are widely acknowledged, the interface with pragmatics has received comparatively little attention. Although numerous studies have addressed individual phenomena such as quotation marks or emojis, a systematic overview of the relevant devices is still lacking. This article provides a first survey of key examples of pragmatic writing in contemporary German and highlights parallels between phenomena that have largely been discussed in isolation. We argue that pragmatic writing devices are widespread and not limited to the digital era. Our selection is guided by a set of defining characteristics: all included phenomena relate to the context of the written utterance. We classify these devices according to the contextual dimension they engage with, be it the utterance situation, illocutionary force, textual structuring and attention management, or the social context through expressions of emotion, (im)politeness, or group identity. While not exhaustive, this overview aims to initiate a broader discussion of a linguistic interface that has long been overlooked.

This paper revisits the problem of the derivation of phonographic signs in Mayan writing (cf. Mora-Marín 2003). The primary goal is to evaluate Lacadena’s (2010a, 2010b) proposal that the Mayan syllabary was initially derived through the wholesale adoption of a Mixe-Zoquean-based script. Lacadena argued that Mayan syllabograms based on consonants shared by both Mayan and Mixe-Zoquean generally lack acrophonic explanations, while syllabograms for consonants exclusive to Mayan can be explained either by Mayan-based acrophony or graphic modifications of existing graphemes (i.e. addition of graphic elements, or coinage of digraphs). After (1) preparing a more comprehensive dataset of Mayan syllabograms using the Maya Hieroglyphic Database (Looper and Macri (1991–2025)), and (2) conducting a more thorough review of the literature for possible acrophonic derivations and the nature of graphic modifications and seemingly digraphic combinations, the paper carries out a statistical test of a syllabary development model based on Lacadena’s proposal, concluding that such model is not viable, and that on present evidence, the Mayan syllabary was mostly an autochtonous invention.