Hostname: page-component-7c8c6479df-7qhmt Total loading time: 0 Render date: 2024-03-27T08:08:55.797Z Has data issue: false hasContentIssue false

Linguistic constraints on children's ability to isolate phonemes in Arabic

Published online by Cambridge University Press:  28 September 2007

ELINOR SAIEGH-HADDAD
Affiliation:
Bar-Ilan University, Israel

Abstract

The study tested the effect of three factors on Arab children's (N=256) phoneme isolation: phoneme's linguistic affiliation (standard phonemes vs. spoken phonemes), phoneme position (initial vs. final), and linguistic context (singleton vs. cluster). Two groups of children speaking two different vernaculars were tested. The two vernaculars differed with respect to whether they included four critical Standard Arabic phonemes. Using a repeated-measure design, we tested children's phonemic sensitivity toward these four phonemes versus other phonemes. The results showed that the linguistic affiliation of the phoneme was reliable in explaining phoneme isolation reaffirming, hence the external validity of the linguistic affiliation constraint in explaining phoneme awareness in diglossic Arabic. The results also showed that initial phonemes and initial singleton phonemes were particularly difficult for children to isolate. These findings were discussed in light of a stipulated unique phonological and orthographic cohesion of the consonant–vowel unit in Arabic.

Type
Articles
Copyright
2007 Cambridge University Press

Access options

Get access to the full version of this content by using one of the access options below. (Log in options will check for institutional or personal access. Content may require purchase if you do not have access.)

References

Ababneh Y.2000. Studies in the linguistics and phonology of Arabic[in Arabic]. Amman, Jordan: Dar El-Shorook.
Adams M. J.1990. Beginning to read: Thinking and learning about print. Cambridge, MA: MIT Press.
Akmajian A., Demers R. A., Farmer A. K., & Harnish R. M.1995. Linguistics: An introduction to language and communication. Cambridge, MA: MIT Press.
Aro M., & Wimmer H.2003. Learning to read: English in comparison to six more regular orthographies. Applied Psycholinguistics, 24, 621635.Google Scholar
Bentin S., Hammer R., & Cahan S.1991. The effects of aging and first grade schooling on the development of phonological awareness. Psychological Science, 2, 271274.Google Scholar
Bentin S., & Leshem H.1993. On the interaction of phonologic awareness and reading acquisition: It's a two-way street. Annals of Dyslexia, 43, 125148.Google Scholar
Ben-Dror I., Frost R., & Bentin S.1995. Orthographic representation and phonemic segmentation in skilled readers: A cross-language comparison. Psychological Science, 6, 176181.Google Scholar
Booij G. E.1983. Principles and parameters in prosodic phonology. Linguistics, 21, 249280.Google Scholar
Booth J. R., & Perfetti C. A.2002. Onset and rime structure influences naming but not early word identification in children and adults. Scientific Studies of Reading, 6, 123.Google Scholar
Bruck M., & Treiman R.1990. Phonological awareness and spelling in normal children and dyslexics: The case of initial consonant clusters. Journal of Experimental Child Psychology, 42, 156178.Google Scholar
Byrne B.1996. The foundations of literacy. East Sussex: Psychology Press.
Byrne B., & Fielding-Barnsley R.1989. Phonemic awareness and letter knowledge in the child's acquisition of the alphabetic principle. Journal of Educational Psychology, 81, 313321.Google Scholar
Byrne B., & Fielding-Barnsley R.1990. Acquiring the alphabetic principle: A case for teaching recognition of phoneme identity. Journal of Educational Psychology, 28, 805812.Google Scholar
Byrne B., & Fielding-Barnsley R.1993. Evaluating a program to teach phonemic awareness to young children: A 1-year follow-up. Journal of Educational Psychology, 85, 104111.Google Scholar
Christensen C. A.1997. Onset, rhymes, and phonemes in learning to read. Scientific Studies of Reading, 1, 341358.Google Scholar
Clements G. N., & Keyser S. J.1983. CV phonology: A generative theory of the syllable. Cambridge, MA: MIT Press.
Cohen-Gross D.2003. Syllable structure in modern Hebrew. In O. Schwarzwald, S. Blum-Kulka, & E. Olshtein (Eds.), A tribute to Raphael Nir: Studies in communication, linguistics and language teaching (pp. 359369) [in Hebrew]. Jerusalem: Carmel.
Content A., Kolinsky R., Morais J., & Bertelson P.1986. Phonetic segmentation in prereaders: Effects of corrective information. Journal of Experimental Child Psychology, 42, 4972.Google Scholar
Coulmas F.1987. What writing can do to language: Some preliminary remarks. In S. Battestini (Ed.), Developments in linguistics and semiotics, language teaching and learning, communication across cultures. Georgetown University Round Table on Language and Linguistics, 1986 (pp. 107129). Washington, DC: Georgetown University Press.
De Cara B., & Goswami U.2002. Statistical analysis of similarity relations among spoken words: Evidence for the special status of rimes in English. Behavioural Research Methods and Instrumentation, 34, 416423.Google Scholar
DeWeirdt W.1988. Speech perception and frequency discrimination in good and poor readers. Applied Psycholinguistics, 9, 163183.Google Scholar
Duncan L. G., Seymour P. H. K., & Hill S.1997. How important are rhymes and analogy in beginning reading? Cognition, 63, 171208.Google Scholar
Eckman F. E., & Iverson G. K.1993. Sonority and markedness among onset clusters in the interlanguage of ESL learners. Second Language Research, 9, 234252.Google Scholar
Elbro C.1996. Early linguistic abilities and reading development: A review and a hypothesis, Reading and Writing: An Interdisciplinary Journal, 8, 453485.Google Scholar
Elbro C.1998. When reading is “readn” or somthn. Distinctness of phonological representations of lexical items in normal and disabled readers. Scandinavian Journal of Psychology, 39, 149153.Google Scholar
Ennaji M.2002. Comment. International Journal of the Sociology of Language: Focus on Diglossia, 157, 7183.Google Scholar
Ferguson C. A.1959. Diglossia. Word, 14, 4756.Google Scholar
Fudge E. C.1969. Syllables. Journal of Linguistics, 5, 193220.Google Scholar
Fudge E. C.1987. Branching structure within the syllable. Journal of Linguistics, 23, 359377.Google Scholar
Geudens A., & Sandra D.2003. Beyond implicit phonological knowledge: No support for an onset–rime structure in children's explicit phonological awareness. Journal of Memory and Language, 49, 157182.Google Scholar
Geudens A., Sandra D., Martensen H., & Nation K.2004. No support for an onset–rime structure in English- and Dutch-speaking children's recall errors. Paper presented at the annual meeting of the Society for Scientific Studies of Reading (SSSR), Amsterdam.Google Scholar
Geudens A., Sandra D., & van den Broek W.2004. Segmenting two-phoneme syllables: Developmental differences in relation with early reading skills. Brain and Language, 90, 338352.Google Scholar
Goldsmith J.1990. Autosegmental and metrical phonology. Oxford: Blackwell.
Gombert J. E.1992. Metalinguistic development. Chicago: University of Chicago Press.
Goswami U.1986. Children's use of analogy in learning to read: A developmental study. Journal of Experimental Child Psychology, 42, 7383.Google Scholar
Goswami U.1988. Orthographic analogies and reading development. Quarterly Journal of Experimental Psychology, 40A, 239268.Google Scholar
Goswami U.1991. Learning about spelling sequences: The role of onsets and rimes in analogies in reading. Child Development, 62, 11101123.Google Scholar
Goswami U.1992. Analogical reasoning in children. Hillsdale, NJ: Erlbaum.
Goswami U.1998. Rime-based coding in early reading development in English: Orthographic analogies and rime neighborhoods. In C. Home & R. M. Joshi (Eds.), Reading and spelling: Development and disorders (pp. 6986). Mahwah, NJ: Erlbaum.
Goswami U.2000. Phonological representations, reading development and dyslexia: Towards a cross-linguistic theoretical framework. Dyslexia, 6, 133151.3.0.CO;2-A>CrossRefGoogle Scholar
Goswami U.2002. Phonology, reading, and dyslexia: A cross-linguistic perspective. Annals of Dyslexia, 52, 141164.Google Scholar
Goswami U., & Bryant P.1990. Phonological skills and learning to read. London: Erlbaum.
Goswami U., & De Cara B.2000. Lexical representations and development: The emergence of rime processing. Paper presented at the Workshop on Spoken Word Access Processes, Max-Plank Institute of Psycholinguistics.Google Scholar
Goswami U., & East M.2000. Rhyme and analogy in beginning reading: Conceptual and methodological issues. Applied Psycholinguistics, 21, 6393.Google Scholar
Hudson A.2002. Outline of a theory of diglossia. International Journal of the Sociology of Language, 157, 148.Google Scholar
Hymes D.1980. Speech and language: On the origins and foundations of inequality among speakers. In D. Hymes (Ed.), Language in education: Ethnolinguistic essays. Language and ethnography series. Washington, DC: Center for Applied Linguistics.
Joseph J.1987. Eloquence and power: The rise of language standards and standard languages. New York: Blackwell.
Liberman I. Y., Shankweiler D., Fischer F. W., & Carter B.1974. Explicit syllable and phoneme segmentation in the young child. Journal of Experimental Child Psychology, 18, 201212.Google Scholar
Luce P. A., & Pisoni D. B.1998. Recognizing spoken words: The neighborhood activation model. Ear and Hearing, 19, 136.Google Scholar
Maamouri M.1998. Language education and human development: Arabic diglossia and its impact on the quality of education in the Arab region(Discussion paper). Washington, DC: The World Bank, Mediterranean Development Forum.
Major R. C., & Faudree M. C.1996. Markedness universals and the acquisition of voicing contrasts by Korean speakers of English. Studies in Second Language Acquisition, 18, 6990.Google Scholar
McBride-Chang C.1995. What is phonological awareness? Journal of Educational Psychology, 87, 179192.Google Scholar
Metsala J. L.1997a. An examination of word frequency and neighborhood density in the development of spoken word recognition. Memory and Cognition, 25, 4756.Google Scholar
Metsala J. L.1997b. Spoken word recognition in reading disabled children. Journal of Educational Psychology, 89, 159169.Google Scholar
Metsala J. L.1999. Young children's phonological awareness and non-word repetition as a function of vocabulary development. Journal of Educational Psychology, 91, 319.Google Scholar
Metsala J. L., & Walley A. C.1998. Spoken vocabulary growth and the segmental restructuring of lexical representations: Precursors to phonemic awareness and early reading ability. In J. L. Metsala & L. C. Ehri (Eds.), Word recognition in beginning literacy (pp. 89120). Mahwah, NJ: Erlbaum.
Morais J., Alegria J., & Content A.1987. The relationship between segmental analysis and alphabetic literacy: An interactive view. European Bulletin of Cognitive Psychology, 7, 415438.Google Scholar
Morais J., Bertelson P., Cary L., & Alegria J.1986. Literacy training and speech segmentation. Cognition, 24, 4564.Google Scholar
Morais J., Cary L., Alegria J., & Bertelson P.1979. Does awareness of speech as a sequence of phones arise spontaneously? Cognition, 7, 323331.Google Scholar
National Reading Panel. 2000. Report of the National Reading Panel teaching children to read: An evidence-based assessment of the scientific research literature on reading and its implications for reading instruction. Washington, DC: National Institute of Child Health and Human Development.
Reed M. A.1989. Speech perception and the discrimination of brief auditory cues in reading disabled children. Journal of Experimental Child Psychology, 48, 270292.Google Scholar
Saiegh-Haddad E.2003. Linguistic distance and initial reading acquisition: The case of Arabic diglossia. Applied Psycholinguistics, 24, 115135.Google Scholar
Saiegh-Haddad E.2004. The impact of phonemic and lexical distance on the phonological analysis of words and pseudowords in a diglossic context. Applied Psycholinguistics, 25, 495512.Google Scholar
Saiegh-Haddad E.2005. Correlates of reading fluency in Arabic: Diglossic and orthographic factors. Reading and Writing: An Interdisciplinary Journal, 18, 559582.Google Scholar
Saiegh-Haddad E.(in press). Epilinguistic and metalinguistic awareness may be subject to different constraints: Evidence from Hebrew. First Language.
Saiegh-Haddad E.2007. A corpus linguistic analysis of the language of five-year-old Arabic native speaking children. Manuscript submitted for publication.Google Scholar
Schreuder R., & van Bon W. H. J.1989. Phonemic analysis: Effects of word properties. Journal of Research in Reading, 12, 5978.Google Scholar
Seymour P. H. K., Aro M., & Erskine J. M.2003. Foundation literacy skills in European orthographies. British Journal of Psychology, 94, 143174.Google Scholar
Share D. L.1995. Phonological recoding and self-teaching: Sine qua non of reading acquisition. Cognition, 55, 151218.Google Scholar
Share D., & Blum P.2005. Syllable splitting in literate and preliterate Hebrew speakers: Onsets and rimes or bodies and codas? Journal of Experimental Child Psychology, 92, 182202.Google Scholar
Stahl S. A., & Murray B. A.1994. Defining phonological awareness and its relationship to early reading. Journal of Educational Psychology, 86, 221234.Google Scholar
Stanovich K. E.1992. Speculations on the causes and consequences of individual differences in early reading acquisition. In P. B. Gough, L. C. Ehri, & R. Treiman (Eds.), Reading acquisition (pp. 307342). Hillsdale, NJ: Erlbaum.
Stanovich K. E., Cunningham A. E., & Cramer B. B.1984. Assessing phonological awareness in kindergarten children: Issues of task comparability. Journal of Experimental Child Psychology, 38, 175190.Google Scholar
Stuart M.2005. Phonemic analysis and reading development: Some current issues. Journal of Research in Reading, 28, 3949.Google Scholar
Swan D., & Goswami U.1997. Phonological awareness deficits in developmental dyslexia and the phonological representations hypothesis. Journal of Experimental Child Psychology, 66, 1841.Google Scholar
Tallal P.1980. Auditory temporal perception, phonics, and reading disabilities in children. Brain and Language, 9, 182198.Google Scholar
Treiman R.1983. The structure of spoken syllables: Evidence from novel word games. Cognition, 15, 4974.Google Scholar
Treiman R.1985. Onsets and rimes as units of spoken syllables: Evidence from children. Journal of Experimental Child Psychology, 39, 161181.Google Scholar
Treiman R.1988. The internal structure of the syllable. In G. Carlson & M. Tanenhaus (Eds.) Linguistic structure in language processing (pp. 2752). Norwell, MA: Kluwer Academic.
Treiman R., & Baron J.1981. Segmental analysis ability: Development and relation to reading ability. In G. E. MacKinnon (Ed.), Reading research: Advances in theory and practice (Vol. 3, pp. 159198). New York: Academic Press.
Treiman R., & Danis C.1988. Short-term memory errors for spoken syllables are affected by the linguistic structure of the syllables. Journal of Experimental Psychology: Learning, memory, and Cognition, 14, 145152.Google Scholar
Treiman R., & Kessler B.1995. In defense of an onset–rime syllable structure for English. Language and Speech, 38, 127142.Google Scholar
Treiman R., Mullennix J., Bijeljac-Babic R., & Richmond-Welty E. D.1995. The special role of rimes in the description, use, and acquisition of English orthography. Journal of Experimental Psychology: General, 124, 107136.Google Scholar
Treiman R., & Weatherson S.1992. Effects of linguistic structure on children's ability to isolate initial consonants. Journal of Educational Psychology, 84, 174201.Google Scholar
Treiman R., & Zukowsky A.1991. Levels of phonological awareness. In S. A. Badry & D. P. Shankweiler (Eds.), Phonological processes in literacy: A tribute to Isabelle Y. Liberman (pp. 6783). Hillsdale, NJ: Erlbaum.
Uhry J. K., & Ehri L. C.1999. Ease of segmenting two-and three-phoneme words in kindergarten: Rime cohesion or vowel salience? Journal of Educational Psychology, 91, 564603.Google Scholar
Wagner R. K., & Torgesen J. K.1987. The nature of phonological processing and its causal role in the acquisition of reading skills. Psychological Bulletin, 101, 192212.Google Scholar
Walley A. C.1993. The role of vocabulary development in children's spoken word recognition and segmentation ability. Developmental Review, 13, 286350.Google Scholar
Walley A. C., Metsala J. L., & Garlock V. M.2003. Spoken vocabulary growth: Its role in the development of phoneme awareness and early reading ability. Reading and Writing: An Interdisciplinary Journal, 16, 520.Google Scholar
Werker J. F., & Tees R. C.1987. Speech perception in severely disabled and average reading children. Canadian Journal of Psychology, 41, 4861.Google Scholar
Wolters G., & van den Broek W.2004. Influence of bigrapheme frequency and consonantal sonority on first grade reading performance. Paper presented at the Annual Meeting of the Society for Scientific Studies of Reading (SSSR), Amsterdam.Google Scholar
Yoon H. K., Bolger D. J., Kwon O. S., & Perfetti C. A.2002. Subsyllabic units in reading. In L. Verhoeven, C. Elbro, & P. Reitsma (Eds.), Precursors of functional literacy (Vol. 11, pp. 139163). Amsterdam: Benjamins.
Yopp H. K.1988. The validity and reliability of phonemic awareness tests. Reading Research Quarterly, 23, 159177.Google Scholar
Ziegler J. C., & Goswami U.2005. Reading acquisition, developmental dyslexia, and skilled reading across languages: A psycholinguistic grain size theory. Psychological Bulletin, 131, 329.Google Scholar