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READING IN AN ALPHASYLLABARY 1
Running Head: READING IN AN ALPHASYLLABARY
Reading in an Alphasyllabary: Implications for a Language-Universal Theory of
Learning to Read.
Sonali Nag
University of York
and
The Promise Foundation, Bangalore
Margaret J. Snowling
University of York
Pre-print version.
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Abstract
We report the associations between phonological awareness and orthographic
knowledge in readers of alphasyllabic Kannada. Less fluent 9-12 year olds with
lower orthographic knowledge were at floor on phoneme tasks but more fluent
readers, with greater orthographic knowledge showed significant phonemic
awareness. Orthographic knowledge, phoneme awareness and RAN were
independent predictors of reading rate, and together with syllable awareness
predicted individual differences in reading accuracy. Taken together, we suggest
that increasing alphasyllabic literacy promotes a dual representation at the syllable
and phoneme level, and that the analytic processes involved in acquiring
orthographic knowledge and mappings with phonology are a universal aspect of
reading development across languages.
Keywords: syllable awareness, phoneme awareness, RAN, orthographic knowledge,
non-alphabetic scripts, Indian language
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Reading in an alphasyllabary: implications for a language-universal theory of
learning to read.
An important agenda for cross-linguistic research is to clarify which aspects of
reading development are universal as distinct from language-specific (Share, 2008).
However, compared to the voluminous literature on reading development in
alphabetic languages, studies of non-alphabetic scripts are still relatively rare, with
the possible exception of Chinese (Hanley, 2005; Perfetti & Liu, 2005). Here we
report findings of a study of individual differences in children’s reading of Kannada,
an alphasyllabary with typological features seen in several South Asian scripts.
A commonly held view of early phonological development and alphabetic literacy
has been that phonological awareness proceeds from large units, namely syllables,
to awareness of small units or phonemes (Carroll, Snowling, Hulme & Stevenson,
2003; Treiman & Breaux, 1982). It has been proposed that in order to abstract the
principles of the alphabetic system, children need to develop both phoneme
awareness and letter knowledge (Byrne 1998; Share, 1995). However, an
alternative view is that phoneme awareness is a consequence rather than a
precursor of learning to read (Castles & Coltheart, 2004; Goswami & Bryant, 1990;
Morais, Carey, Alegria & Bertelson, 1979).
Much of the debate regarding the causal relations between phoneme awareness
and reading skills draws on evidence from readers of alphabetic languages (Hulme,
Snowling, Caravolas and Carroll 2005; Mann & Wimmer, 2002). Within such
languages, the rate of development of phoneme awareness and of decoding skills
varies with the consistency of the orthography, readers of more consistent
orthographies gaining competence more quickly than readers of English (Seymour,
Aro & Erskine , 2005). Thus, phoneme awareness plays a time-limited role as a
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predictor of individual differences in consistent orthographies (de Jong & van der
Leij, 2003) whereas in English, it continues to predict reading skill throughout
development (Bruck, 1992; McDougall, Hulme, Ellis & Monk, 1994; Muter, Hulme,
Snowling & Stevenson, 2004). Such findings favour the idea of reciprocal causation
whereby phoneme awareness, letter knowledge and reading skills interact in the
process of learning to read and phoneme awareness develops rapidly in readers
who primarily encounter consistent grapheme-phoneme relationships.
The role of phonological skills in learning to read in non-alphabetic languages is
less clear. In Chinese, each symbol maps to a syllable pointing to the possibility that
phoneme awareness may not play a critical role in logographic literacy. However,
studies have shown that there is a phase of Chinese word learning that entails
phonological analysis (Ho & Bryant, 1997; Lin et al., 2010) and good and poor
readers differ in their performance on tasks tapping both syllable and phoneme level
skills (McBride-Chang, Bialystock, Chong & Li, 2004; Shu, Peng & McBride-Chang,
2008). A proviso is that these studies involved Chinese readers who had been
taught an alphabetic script, Pinyin, and the findings about the development of
phoneme awareness are less clear in the traditional Chinese script and where
instruction does not include reference to phonetic information (Hanley, 2005).
Drawing together findings from different languages, Ziegler and Goswami (2005)
proposed that reading development is shaped by three factors: the availability (or
accessibility) of different phonological units prior to reading (the phonological
structure of the ambient language, (Caravolas & Bruck,1993)), the consistency of the
orthography-phonology mappings and the granularity of the orthography, specifically
whether mappings are at the level of smaller or larger units (or both as in English).
Within this ‘Psycholinguistic Grain Size’ framework, the successful development of
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reading requires the child to use grain sizes in the symbol system of their language
that allow an optimal mapping to the phonology of their language. It follows that
languages in which there are mappings to orthographic units at more than one unit
size (e.g., single letters and letter strings in English) present more of a challenge to
the learner than orthographies that mainly contain small or large units (e.g., Finnish
with predominantly phoneme level units; Japanese Hiragana with predominantly
syllable level units).
Against this back-drop, we report findings from a study of an Indian language,
Kannada, in which we examined the associations between orthographic knowledge
and different phonological units and their concurrent relationship with reading
accuracy and fluency. Orthographic Knowledge refers to knowledge of individual
symbol units and the legal order, both spatial and sequential, of these symbols1. In
addition, we assessed whether performance on a measure of rapid automatized
naming (RAN) would also predict individual differences in reading skills. RAN is a
simple task in which participants name a series of familiar symbols (e.g., letters;
digits) as fast as possible. The time to complete such tasks is a robust predictor of
reading in highly consistent alphabetic orthographies (de Jong & van der Leij, 2003;
Moll, Fussenegger, Willburger & Landerl, 2009; Nikolopoulos, Goulandris, Hulme &
Snowling, 2006), less consistent alphabetic orthographies (Bowey, 2005) and the
logographic Chinese (Liao, Georgiou & Parrila, 2008; McBride-Chang & Ho, 2000),
and it has been hypothesized that RAN taps a cognitive universal associated with
reading - the ability to rapidly access verbal (name) codes from visual (symbol)
information (Lervåg & Hulme, 2009; McCrory , Mechelli, Frith & Price, 2005).
Kannada orthography and phonology
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We present Kannada as an example of a language in which both the phonological
units of the language are salient and hence accessible and the consistency of the
mappings between orthography and phonology is high. In standard Kannada, most
words are bi-syllabic and tri-syllabic in length and monosyllabic words are rare.
Words typically end with open syllables and consonant clusters are common in all
word positions.
In most alphabetic languages, the factors of consistency and granularity are
confounded in that consistent orthographies tend also to be low in granularity (often
consisting of reliable, small sized orthographic representations). However in
Kannada, the mappings between orthographic and phonological units vary in size
despite its consistency and hence, can be described as a language with mixed
granularity. To be specific, the primary mapping of phonology in Kannada is at the
level of the orthographic syllable (syllabic) but the symbols of the language also
embody phoneme markers (hence alphasyllabic). These orthographic units with
syllable-phoneme encodings are called akshara and are a characteristic of the
Kannada writing system and all other Indian alphasyllabaries.
The akshara can be divided according to the amount of phonemic information
they encode (see Figure 1). The primary vowels (the /V/ syllables) and the
consonants with the vowel /a/ inherent in the symbol (the /Ca/ syllables) do not
reveal distinct phonemic markers. The CV akshara with vowels other than /a/ (the
CV syllables) encode the consonant and the vowel as two distinct phonemic
markers. At the next level of complexity are the CCV akshara: one phonemic marker
each for the first consonant, the second consonant and the vowel. Technically it is
possible for the writing system to construct larger clusters of phonemic markers (e.g.
CCCV syllables) though the need for representing such sound units is rare in
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Kannada. The syllabic akshara (the /V/ and /Ca/ syllables) are taught first followed
by the akshara with embedded phonemes (the CV and CCV syllables), with
instruction methods differing in the extent to which children’s attention is explicitly
drawn to these markers.
The availability of distinct phonemic representation in the Kannada orthography
has one important consequence – the availability of more than 400 distinct symbols,
and learning of this extensive symbol set continues well into the primary school
years (Nag, 2007). A further important feature is the dual mappings between
akshara and phonemes. Consonants and vowels in the Kannada writing system
have two symbol representations; the primary form is a full symbol and the
secondary form is a diacritic2 symbol mapping to the same sound. In the minimal
word pair uma-suma, the phoneme /u/ is written in the primary form in the first word
but the secondary form in the second word: GªÀÄ - ¸ÀĪÀÄ. Among consonants, the
primary form is the frequently used symbol, with the diacritic form limited to
representing the second consonant in consonant clusters. Among vowels the
diacritic form is the often used form, representing the vowels that follow consonants
in either CV or CCV/CCCV syllables. The primary form of the vowel is reserved for
vowels in word initial positions and for the vowel as a separate morpheme. Thus,
while there is a consistent and regular association of individual symbols to sounds in
Kannada, there are two-symbols for each sound (the primary and the secondary
symbol). These complexities pose challenges to children learning to read and it has
been reported that akshara characteristics such as the position of phoneme markers
carry a processing cost (Karanth, Mathew & Kurien, 2004; Vaid & Gupta, 2002).
While the consistency of the Kannada writing system favours rapid acquisition, poor
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readers are slow in their mastery of the large number of orthographic units (Gupta,
2004; Nag, 2007; Ramaa, 1993; Purushottama, 1994).
Turning to phonological development, syllable awareness appears to be more
critical than phoneme awareness in alphasyllabic reading. Reduced phonemic
awareness has been reported among primary school readers of Kannada (Nag-
Arulmani, 2003; Prakash, Rekha, Nigam & Karanth, 1993). There is, however,
evidence that even among primary school children, good readers are better than
poor readers not just in syllabic but also in phonemic processing (Nag-Arulmani,
2003; Ramaa, 1993). Further, early knowledge of the akshara with phonemic
markers (the CV and CCV syllables) is a predictor of later phoneme processing skills
(Nag, 2007). Such findings suggest that alphasyllabic literacy research may be able
to offer fresh insights into the debate regarding the causal role of phonological units
of different sizes (e.g., syllables and phonemes), in learning to read.
We were interested in three inter-related research questions: What is the
association between reading level, syllable and phoneme processing and
orthographic knowledge about the alphasyllabary? To what extent do syllable and
phoneme level processing and orthographic knowledge explain variance in Kannada
reading accuracy and fluency? And does RAN, an important predictor in consistent
alphabetic orthographies, explain variations in reading attainments in the consistent
Kannada alphasyllabary? Based on findings reported in cross-linguistic studies
(Prakash et al., 1993; McBride-Chang et al., 2004; Seymour et al., 2003; Gupta,
2004) we made several predictions about the associations between levels of reading,
phonological awareness and orthographic knowledge and the predictors of individual
differences in reading fluency.
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First, because phonological development is known to proceed from large to small
units and the emphasis in the participating schools in our sample was on teaching of
whole akshara (the orthographic syllables) rather than the phonemic markers within
these symbols, we anticipated that syllable awareness would be better than
phonemic awareness. However, because of the availability of phonemic information
in the akshara system, we predicted that increasing knowledge about the akshara
symbols would be associated with greater phonemic awareness; the more akshara
that are known, the more likely it would be that the child had abstracted the
phonemic markers within the symbols.
Second, despite the relatively slow acquisition of phoneme level skills, we
expected measures of both syllable and phoneme awareness to predict individual
differences in reading accuracy given the availability of both large and small sized
mappings in the writing system. Third, we predicted that to the extent that there are
similarities between consistent alphabetic orthographies and the consistent Kannada
alphasyllabary, RAN would be a predictor of Kannada reading skill, providing an
independent contribution to individual differences over and above the role of
phonological awareness and orthographic knowledge.
In summary, given the alphasyllabic nature of the writing system we expected
relative differences in syllable and phoneme processing and despite consistency in
the mappings, we expected to find the association between phoneme awareness
and reading fluency to be more robust over time than reported for other consistent
but contained orthographies in which its role is limited to the very early stages of
acquisition (such as German and Dutch). We first report levels of syllable and
phoneme awareness in three groups of children differing in level of reading fluency
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and then examine the role of orthographic knowledge, phonological awareness and
rapid naming as predictors of individual differences in reading accuracy and fluency.
Method
Participants
The investigation was in a representative selection of schools that had earlier participated
in a survey of the reading skills of 411 children in grades 1 to 3 (TPF-NIAS, 2004-07). One
hundred and twelve children took part in the study (Mean age = 9,8; SD = 1.05; 67
boys, 45 girls), drawn from Grades 4, 5 and 6 in 12 schools. Consent for children’s
participation in the study was received from the education authority in accordance
with the norms followed by the government school system in the country. The
sample had a fair representation of the SES groups in the region; 47%, 50.9% and
1.8% of children belonged to the lower, middle and upper-middle socio-economic
status groups respectively. Sixty-six percent of the children were either bi- or
multilingual.
The children began formal Kannada literacy instruction in Grade 1, at around age
5. Schools in the study followed a prescribed Kannada language curriculum and
hence the literacy instruction was similar across participating schools. Akshara
instruction focussed on whole symbols rather than on phonemic markers, and rote
memory of a sight vocabulary was encouraged. The progression of Kannada literacy
instruction was based on prescribed text books for each school year. School policy
required English to be introduced in Grade 3. English instruction was sporadic with
only 12% of the Grade 4-6 children in this study accurately spelling and/or reading
words like ‘boy’ and ‘school’. This 12% did not belong to any particular band of
phonological attainments or Kannada reading attainments reported here.
READING IN AN ALPHASYLLABARY 11
Tests and Materials
General cognitive ability. This was assessed using Raven’s Standard Progressive
Matrices. General ability is reported in percentile scores based on Indian norms
(Deshpande & Patwardhan, 2006).
Literacy skills. Akshara knowledge. Children read nine symbols comprising no
specific phoneme markers (two primary vowels, seven CV akshara with the inherent
vowel /a/), five symbols with two phoneme markers (CV akshara with vowels other
than /a/) and six symbols with three phoneme markers (CCV akshara). Cronbach
alpha .82.
Reading accuracy. Each child was asked to read a word list, a nonword list and a
set of six texts. Correct reading of an item was given an accuracy score of 1. The
word list comprised three bi-syllabic, six tri-syllabic and one polysyllabic word. The
nonword list comprised ten bi-syllabic, four tri-syllabic and one polysyllabic nonword.
The total number of words in the six texts was 80 (alpha =.97).
Reading speed. The reading speed test was based on Grade 3 – 4 level texts of 26,
14, 19 and 21 words each. Reading rate was calculated by subtracting the errors
from the total number of words in a passage and dividing by time taken (alpha = .94).
Phonological awareness. An item pool of 73 bi-syllabic nonwords was assembled
for use in tests of phonological awareness at the syllable and phoneme levels. The
nonwords were developed from a list of common words by replacing one syllable in a
word with another syllable from another word. The syllable and phoneme tasks were
matched for task demands.
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Syllable deletion. In this 20 item test, ten items required deletion of the initial syllable
(si in si-ri) and ten items deletion of the final syllable (ka in shal-ka).
Syllable substitution. In this 15 item test, children had to make five initial
substitutions (gnaa-pa to sne-pa) and ten final substitutions (paab-da to paab-che).
Phoneme deletion. In this 20 item test, ten items each required phoneme deletion in
the initial (s in snera) and final position (i in mushti).
Phoneme substitution. In this 15 item test, five items required phoneme substitutions
in the initial position (kruya with /s/ to become sruya) and ten items required
manipulation of the phoneme in the final position (swari with /u/ to become swaru)3.
Reliability was calculated separately for each task: syllable deletion (alpha = .66),
syllable substitution (.73), phoneme deletion (.91) and phoneme substitution (.88).
Rapid Automatized Naming (RAN). A set of numbers with bi-syllabic Kannada
names (1, 3, 4, 5, 6, 7, 8) were presented in semi-random order printed on a A4
sheet in a sans-serif font with font size of 36. There were a total of 45 numbers in
five rows of nine items each. Each child was asked to rapidly name the numbers.
Rate of processing was calculated by subtracting the number of items read out
wrongly from the total number of items divided by the time taken. Studies using a
similar RAN task have reported reliability to range between .7 and .9 (e.g., Wagner,
Torgesen & Rashotte, 1999).
Procedure
Each child was seen individually for approximately half an hour daily over four
days (the testing battery included tests of oral language, visual memory and reading
comprehension that are not reported here). The first author and three research
READING IN AN ALPHASYLLABARY 13
assistants who were native speakers of Kannada administered a battery of tests.
Research assistants received two days of orientation and on-line support.
Results
The protocols of nine children were incomplete because they did not come on
one of the four testing days. Data screening revealed that eight children had
exceptionally low reading accuracy and were at floor on several tasks; removal of
these children improved the distributions of variables. We present data on 95
children (57 M, 38 F); aged between 8;11 and 12 years (M = 10, SD = .99); scores
on the Raven’s Matrices ranged from the 25th to the 95th percentile (M = 70.16, SD =
20.31). Table 1 shows performance on measures of literacy, phonological
processing and rapid naming for these participants. Overall children found tasks
requiring syllable awareness easier than those requiring awareness of phonemes.
Concurrent associations between reading level, phonological processing and
orthographic knowledge
We were interested to examine the pattern of phonological processing and
level of orthographic knowledge across children with increasing reading levels, as
measured by the reading speed task. We did this by splitting the sample based on
reading rate. Children with the bottom 33% of scores were considered the group
with the lowest reading rate (Level 1), the middle 33% the next (Level 2) and the top
33% as the highest in reading rate (Level 3). We split the group in this way rather
than by grade because on both accuracy and reading rate there was considerable
overlap in scores between Grades 4 and 5, and complete overlap between Grades 5
and 6.
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Table 2 gives the descriptive summaries of the groups with the three Reading
Levels. Level 3 was better than Levels 1 and 2 on the reading measures of accuracy
and speed, akshara knowledge and RAN, as was Level 2 when compared to Level
1. Across all three groups, syllable scores were consistently higher than the
phoneme scores and irrespective of the type of phonological unit (syllable, phoneme)
and manipulation (deletion, substitution); Level 3 was significantly better than both
Levels 1 and 2.
For the next set of analyses we summed the deletion and substitution scores
for each phonological unit. Figure 2 shows the relative attainments in syllable and
phoneme processing in comparison to akshara knowledge at each Reading Level.
Turning to the inter-correlations among measures, associations between syllable
awareness and akshara knowledge was significant at Level 1 (r = .51, p < .001) but
not significant in the other two groups (Level 2, r = .35, ns; Level 3, r = .27, ns). The
pattern was reversed for phoneme awareness. In the groups with better reading
rates, the associations between measures of phoneme awareness and akshara
knowledge were between .48 (Level 2) and .68 (Level 3), both significant at the .001
level. For the group with the slowest reading rate (Level 1) the association between
phoneme awareness and akshara knowledge, r = .33, was not significant.
Concurrent predictors of word recognition
For these analyses we examined the data from all 95 children together. Table 3
shows zero-order correlations among the variables in the upper quadrant and partial
correlations controlling for age and non-verbal ability in the lower quadrant. As seen
in the lower quadrant, there were strong inter-correlations among the measures of
reading and akshara knowledge and in turn, these measures correlated moderately
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with measures of syllable and phoneme awareness and rapid naming. There were
moderate to strong inter-correlations among most measures of phonological
awareness (.37 - .72), with the syllable deletion task showing weak correlations with
the two phoneme tasks; substitution (.26) and deletion (.33). The correlations
between phonological awareness and RAN were weak to moderate (.20 - .52).
We next assessed the concurrent predictors of reading accuracy using a series of
parallel hierarchical regressions. For these analyses we formed composite
measures of syllable awareness and phoneme awareness (by summing z scores for
each component task and dividing by 2). In each analysis we first entered General
Ability as a control variable (age did not correlate with word recognition and was
excluded from the analysis). On step 2 we entered akshara knowledge followed on
step 3 by either syllable awareness, phoneme awareness or RAN scores (Table 4).
After General Ability was controlled, akshara knowledge explained a highly
significant 50.1% of the variance in reading accuracy. On the next step, each of the
three phonological variables (syllable, phoneme and RAN) made a further significant
contribution accounting for between 2.2 and 3.7% of the variance. There was a high
degree of commonality between these three measures; when they were entered
together at step 3 they accounted for 5.8% of the variance in reading accuracy. In a
final model, we assessed the proportion of variance in reading accuracy accounted
for by RAN over and above the variance explained by akshara knowledge and
phonological awareness. RAN explained an additional significant 1.9% of this
variance (F (1, 89) = 4.45, p < .05).
Our next analyses followed the same procedure to assess the concurrent
predictors of reading rate. Again, we entered General Ability and akshara
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knowledge on steps 1 and 2, followed on step 3 by entering syllable awareness,
phoneme awareness or RAN scores. Together the three phonological variables
(syllable, phoneme and RAN) accounted for a large and significant 21.8% of
variance in reading rate, as shown in the right hand columns of Table 4. When each
of the variables was entered separately, the contribution of syllable awareness was
not significant but the contributions of both phoneme awareness and RAN were
highly significant (13.1 and 16.5% of variance). In a final model, RAN explained
8.3% of the variance in reading rate over and above the variance explained by
akshara knowledge and phoneme awareness (F (1, 89) = 14.78, p < .001).
Discussion
This study investigated the concurrent relationships among reading and reading-
related skills among 9-12 year-old children who were learning to read in the Kannada
orthography, an alphasyllabary. Although Kannada has a consistent orthography, an
extensive symbol set embodying multiple mappings between orthographic and
phonological units has to be mastered. Our first research question was about the
associations between syllable and phoneme level processing, orthographic
knowledge and different levels of reading. We found skilled readers were better than
less skilled readers in both syllable and phoneme awareness; this finding extend
those reported for younger readers of Kannada (Nag, 2007; Prakash et al., 1993).
Consistent with findings of studies with younger children reading alphabetic and
other alphasyllabic orthographies , performance on syllable processing tasks was
better than on phoneme processing tasks, and performance on these tasks was
modulated by the reading level of the child. Our findings, however, stand in contrast
to those from alphabetic languages in two ways. First, we found syllable awareness
to remain an important predictor of reading accuracy through the middle school
READING IN AN ALPHASYLLABARY 17
years and second, we found that the ability to manipulate phonemes was much less
well developed in these older children; other consistent but alphabetic orthographies
report performance on phoneme tasks to typically reach ceiling (e.g. de Jong & van
der Leij, 2003).
Given the salience of the simple syllable in the spoken form of Kannada (Karanth,
2006), its predominance in the written script and its emphasis in reading instruction
for the sample in the study, it would seem probable that these factors operating
together contribute to the relative stability of syllable awareness as a predictor of
reading accuracy skills. However, since more able readers performed better on
phoneme awareness tasks, our interpretation is that better readers, who are more
familiar with the akshara, are more likely to be able to attend to the internal details of
these symbols to uncover their phonemic constituents. This perhaps triggers a
process of reciprocal interaction such that increased orthographic knowledge
precipitates the development of explicit phoneme awareness. Indeed, although the
present data are cross-sectional and we are careful not to assume causality, our
findings suggest that better readers, who are more familiar with the akshara, are
more likely to show improved phonemic awareness. We propose that this analytic
process is a universal aspect of reading development. Just as Byrne (1998) argued
that children must abstract the alphabetic principle to become proficient readers,
here we propose, children must infer the ‘alphasyllabic principle’; the awareness that
akshara map to phoneme as well as syllable units and both may be used to decode
print. Consistent with this, we have shown that alphasyllabic competence (akshara
knowledge, syllable awareness, phoneme awareness) strongly predicts reading
accuracy in the Kannada orthography. However, reading fluency depends upon
phoneme awareness (associated with the use of phoneme markers) and the skills
READING IN AN ALPHASYLLABARY 18
tapped by RAN. In line with Lervåg and Hulme (2009) we propose that RAN is an
index of cross-modal learning which taps how well children can retrieve the
phonological forms linked to the orthographic representations in their sight
vocabulary. In short, the distinguishing feature of Kannada is that mappings co-exist
at the level of the orthographic syllable and the phonemes within the same symbol
units. Children who have this insight are better readers.
A further important finding of this study is that, despite the consistency of the
Kannada orthography, the 9-12 year-old children in this sample still showed
significant variation in akshara knowledge and in reading accuracy. This contrasts
markedly with findings from children learning both consistent and inconsistent
alphabetic orthographies who have, by this age, typically mastered the name and
sounds of the alphabet set (Seymour et al., 2003); indeed even in English, reading
accuracy asymptotes by around this age (Francis, Shaywitz, Karla, Shaywitz and
Fletcher, 1996). These findings are consistent with the view that the extensiveness
of the Kannada orthography presents a challenge to learners even when the system
of symbol-sound mappings is regular and consistent.
We now turn to consider the theoretical implications of our findings within the
framework of the Psycholinguistic Grain Size theory (Ziegler & Goswami, 2005).
Specifically, we ask whether the current findings confirm three main predictions: that
the ease of learning to read is determined by the availability of phonological units in
the spoken language, the consistency of the mappings between phonological and
orthographic units and the granularity of these mappings.
A script like the Kannada alphasyllabary, unlike the phonemic alphabetic
systems, is efficient in solving the availability problem. The writing system has a
READING IN AN ALPHASYLLABARY 19
layer of orthographic units at the level of the syllables that is immediately accessible
for beginning readers, allowing the learning of the sub-lexical layer of phoneme and
phoneme markers to emerge later. We found that children reading Kannada had a
more developed sense of syllable awareness than phoneme awareness, though
better readers were also better in their performance on the phoneme level tasks.
The second prediction of the Psycholinguistic Grain Size theory is that the extent
of consistency in sound-symbol mappings determines reading acquisition. While the
mappings between orthography and phonology are consistent in Kannada, they are
not one-to-one as in alphabetic languages but comprise correspondences of one
phoneme to two symbols. This form of consistency increases the number of
symbols to be learned. Elsewhere we have proposed that it is particularly the
mastery of the low frequency symbols that set the pace of development in reading
and spelling (Nag, 2007; Nag, Treiman & Snowling, 2010). As is evident from this
study, the construct of consistency needs to be modified on at least two counts:
consistency notations may be other than 1:1 mappings and discussion of how
consistency determines reading development is incomplete without reference to the
cognitive demands placed by the extensiveness of a symbol set.
The third construct in the framework is granularity, the size of symbol units that
can reliably map phonology in a language. The conception of granularity appears to
be predominantly based on linearised, alphabetic writing systems in which symbols
are typically sequenced in line (although diacritics are permitted, e.g., French,
Czech). In such alphabetic scripts, grain size refers to single letters (small grain
size) or letter strings (large grain size). In this formulation, smaller grain size
representations are seen as more efficient and these are sufficient to allow reading
to be accurate in consistent orthographies. In contrast, , inconsistent orthographies
READING IN AN ALPHASYLLABARY 20
use both small and large grain size units to accommodate the phonology of the
language and this renders the reading system less efficient, as is the case in
English. Kannada with its consistent but dual representation at the large and small
unit size (syllable and phoneme) challenges this conception of granularity. We
propose that the advanced akshara knowledge seen among skilled readers of
Kannada includes parallel knowledge about the small and the large unit sizes
embodied in each symbol. While the granularity formulation in the Grain Size theory
would predict that such mixed representations should entail ‘switching costs’ that
slow down reading rate, our findings are to the contrary. Greater Kannada reading
speed was predicted by better akshara knowledge and was arguably indicative of the
ability to abstract the orthographic syllable-phoneme encodings in the symbol set.
Thus, contrary to predictions of Grain Size theory, alphasyllabic strategies, made
possible by the availability of both small and large grain-sized units (mappings to
phonemes and syllables), offered a strategic advantage and reduced rather than
increased processing costs. In summary, the current findings suggest that the
Psycholinguistic Grain Size theory is in need of modification in order to explain data
from alphasyllabic scripts.
A limitation of the present study is that the analyses did not include the bottom
7% of the sample who were at floor on several tasks and had exceptionally low
reading accuracy. We excluded these children given the restricted range in their
data. Another limitation of the present study is that the data are cross-sectional and
therefore cannot address the causal links between reading and the related cognitive
skills that we have assessed. Nonetheless, these findings have implications for a
theory of reading development that addresses both processing universals as well as
typological features of different orthographies. We have found that in Kannada,
READING IN AN ALPHASYLLABARY 21
learning to read depends upon knowledge of the symbol-sound relationships that
comprise the orthography and the nature of the phonological representations in the
ambient spoken language. The reciprocal influence of these factors is what shapes
the course of reading development and what ultimately will distinguish learning to
read in an alphasyllabary from the development of alphabetic reading.
READING IN AN ALPHASYLLABARY 22
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Footnote
1. For researchers of alphabetic writing systems, the term Orthographic
Knowledge usually refers to knowledge of the grapheme sequences that map
to the phonology in the language. Although such knowledge includes
knowledge of letters (individual symbol units), this is often treated as a
separate component called Letter Knowledge. For extensive orthographies,
such as the logographic and alphasyllabary writing systems, knowledge of
symbol units is a significant aspect of orthographic knowledge. In these
writing systems, the terms character knowledge (for the logographies) and
akshara knowledge (for the Indian alphasyllabaries) are used to reflect
knowledge of basic symbol units and their spatial markers.
2. The diacritic is a symbol that can only occur along with another symbol (for
example, the accent in French). In Kannada, specific visuo-spatial rules
govern the position of the diacritic and when used, change the sound value of
the base symbol.
3. The schwa in consonants with inherent vowel has not been considered as a
phoneme.
READING IN AN ALPHASYLLABARY 28
Figure 1: Types of Orthographic Syllable-Phoneme Encoding in the Kannada
Akshara
Syllables with no phoneme markers: Consonants with the
Inherent Vowel /a/ (the /Ca/ syllables)
PÀ R UÀ WÀ ¥À ¥sÀ § ¨sÀ ªÀÄ
/ka/ /kha/ /ga/ /gha/ /pa/ /pha/ /ba/ /bha/ /ma/
Syllables with two phoneme markers: Consonants with Vowels
other than /a/ (the CV syllables)
V VÃ UÀÄ UÀÆ UÉ UÉÃ UÉÆ UÉÆÃ
/gi/ /gii/ /gu/ /guu/ /ge/ /gee/ /go/ /goo/
Syllables with three phoneme markers: Consonant Clusters (the
CCV syllables)
PÉÌ UÀÄÎ zÀÄÝ ¸Éé ®é ¸ÀÄà vÉ æ ¸ÀÄì
/kke/ /ggu/ /ddu/ /sve/ /lva/ /spu/ /tre/ /ssu/
READING IN AN ALPHASYLLABARY 29
Figure 2
Percentage of Correct Responses according to Reading Levels on Orthographic Knowledge, Syllable Processing and Phoneme
Processing Measures
Note. Error bars are at 95% Confidence Interval.
READING IN AN ALPHASYLLABARY 30
Table 1
Descriptive Statistics on Measures of Literacy, Phonological Processing and
Rapid Naming. (N = 95)
M SD Min. – Max.
Reading accuracy (105) 80.43 16.63 12.00 - 103.00
Reading speeda 39.37 16.18 10.50 - 80.00
Akshara knowledge (20) 15.66 3.21 4.00 - 20.00
Syllable deletion (20) 13.56 2.47 5 - 20
Syllable substitution (15) 8.51 3.03 0 - 15
Phoneme deletion (20) 3.63 4.59 0 - 16
Phoneme substitution (15) 2.49 3.42 0 - 12
RAN (digits)b 1.82 .46 .98 - 3.00
Note. a Words per minute. b Items per second.
READING IN AN ALPHASYLLABARY 31
Table 2
Performance of children at the three Reading Levels on Measures of Literacy, Phonological Processing and Rapid Naming
Level 1
(n =32)
Level 2
(n = 31)
Level 3
(n = 32) F (2, 92) Tukey HSD
M SD Min-Max M SD Min-Max M SD Min-Max
Reading accuracy (105) 65.41 17.81 12-9582.65 7.59
66 - 9693.31 7.51
76 – 103 43.86** 1 < 2 < 3
Reading speeda 22.76 5.86 10.50 –
30.0037.06 4.51
30.97 –
46.1558.19 9.16
46.60 –
80.00
218.68** 1 < 2 < 3
Akshara knowledge (20)13.75 3.42
4 - 2015.58 2.75
9 - 2017.62 2.09
11 - 20 15.26** 1 < 2 < 3
Syllable deletion (20)12.53 2.29
5 - 1613.48 2.50
8 - 1914.66 2.21
11 - 20 6.63** 1= 2, 2= 3, 1 < 3
Syllable substitution (15)7.25 3.21
0 - 138.48 3.02
3 - 149.78 2.32
4 - 15 6.19** 1= 2, 2= 3, 1 < 3
Phoneme deletion(20)1.28 2.19
0 - 82.32 3.66
0 - 147.25 5.04
0 - 16 22.32** 1 = 2, Both < 3
Phoneme substitution (15).66 1.07
0 - 31.90 2.52
0 - 124.91 4.28
0 - 12 17.66** 1 = 2, Both < 3
RAN (digits)b
1.52 .40.98 – 2.25
1.80 .411.05 –
3.002.14 .34
1.25 –
3.00
20.94** 1 < 2 < 3
Note. Level 1 = bottom 33%, Level 2 = middle 33% and Level 3 – top 33% in reading rate.a Words per minute. b Items per second.** p > .001
READING IN AN ALPHASYLLABARY 32
Table 3
Correlations between Measures of Literacy, Phonological Processing and Rapid Naming. (N = 95)
Accuracy Reading speed Akshara
knowledge
Syllable
substitution
Syllable
deletion
Phoneme
substitution
Phoneme
deletion
RAN
Reading accuracy _ ..69*** 74*** .38*** .49*** .49*** .52*** .42***
Reading speed .72*** _ .52*** .30*** .33*** .55*** .59*** .56***
Akshara knowledge .68*** .49*** _ .43*** .49*** .57*** .54*** .31***
Syllable substitution .34** .24* .39*** _ .59*** .41*** .42*** .26*
Syllable deletion .45*** .29*** .43*** .58*** _ .32*** .37** .17
Phoneme substitution .44*** .51*** .51*** .37*** .26* _ .74** .33**
Phoneme deletion .49*** .55*** .51*** .37*** .33*** .72*** _ .49***
Rapid automatised naming
(RAN)
.46*** .59*** .38*** .27*** .20 .37*** .52*** _
Note. The upper quadrant contains zero-order correlations, the lower quadrant shows partial correlations controlling age and general abilities.
* p < .05; ** p < .01; *** p < .001.
READING IN AN ALPHASYLLABARY 33
Table 4
Hierarchical Regression Models Predicting Concurrent Reading Accuracy and Reading Rate
(N = 95)
Reading accuracy Reading rate
% R2
Change
F p % R2
Change
F p
Step 1
General abilities 5.3 5.18 < .05 1.6 1.49 ns
Step 2
Akshara knowledge 50.1 103.07 < .001 26.7 34.21 <.001
Step 3
Syllable awareness,
phoneme awareness and
RAN combined
5.8 4.41 < .01 21.8 12.93 <.001
Step 3
RAN 3.7 8.14 < .01 16.5 27.24 <.001
Step 3
Syllable awareness 2.3 4.87 < .05 1.4 1.82 ns
Step 3
Phoneme awareness 2.2 4.75 <.05 13.1 20.39 <.001
READING IN AN ALPHASYLLABARY 34
Author Note
Sonali Nag, University of York and The Promise Foundation, India; and Margaret J.
Snowling, University of York.
We thank the Department of Education in Chamarajanagara District and members of
the District Quality Education Project at the National Institute of Advanced Studies
for their support in the field; Roopa Kishen, Jayashree Vyasarajan, Mamta Gupta
and Kala B. from The Promise Foundation for data collection and data coding.
Finally, we thank the schools where this study was conducted and the children who
willingly participated in the study.
This work was supported by a research grant to MJS from the British Academy,
preparation of the paper was supported by a Royal Society Newton Fellowship to
SN.
Correspondence: Dr. Sonali Nag, Department of Psychology, University of York,
York, Y010 5DD. Email: [email protected].