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Transcript of Reading different writing systems: The grapholinguistic equilibrium hypothesis Mark S. Seidenberg...
Reading different writing systems:The grapholinguistic equilibrium
hypothesis
Mark S. SeidenbergUniversity of Wisconsin-Madison
Golden era for reading research!
One of the big success stories in cognitive science/neuroscience
(links to education: not so good, at least in US)
Not just English; many writing systems, languages
Lots of progress!
My own work
Children, adultsNormal, dyslexicEnglish, Serbian, Chinese,other writing systems
Brain circuits BehaviorComputational modelsConnectionist models that simulate detailed aspects of acquisition, skilled performance. Dyslexia = anomalies in how system develops
Research at UW, MedicalCollege of Wisconsin, Haskins Labs (CT)
For today’s talk, I tried to pick a topic that is of interest to this audience
Writing Systems and Reading
• Do properties of writing systems affect – Skilled reading– Learning to read– Brain circuits that support reading– Dyslexia
We have this framework….
1. Mappings between codes are statistical, not categorical
2. Ouput determined by multiple constraints 3. Division of labor among components varies
between writing systemsbetween individuals
meaning
spelling sound
context
Other models?
There are some.Not the time or place to do comparisons.But, DRC
Doesn’t Read CorrectlyAnd CDP+
Can’d Do Pronunciation, and other stuff
Post-hoc fitting of models to data.Only allows models to fit individual studies of a phenomenon, sort of.“incremental, nested”? No, not actually.
But that’s a different talk
Impact of writing systems: an area where dual-route models
have little to say
• Fitting models to writing systems/languages
• Each gets a different model, different parameters
• Similarities/differences built in: have to know them already
• No learning• No semantics• No “why”
But that’s a different talk
It’s a golden era for reading research but it’s taken a while for cross-linguistic issues to come into focus
Most research: it’s about the properties of writing systemsOrthographic depth
I don’t think this is quite right. It’s about writing systems and the languages they represent
There are tradeoffs between writing systems and languages
There is Grapholinguistic Equilibrium
Confidential:
I don’t actually know how every writing system in the world works.For example, I don’t know
český jazyk
Grapholinguistic Equilibrium is a hypothesis.
Most of the evidence is circumstantial.
Not much direct experimental evidence.
Let’s do an experiment here! Now!
When you hear
Ask: is it true of český jazyk?
If it is, great.
If it isn’t, I’ll go
this
orthography phonology
semantics
Writing affords routes to meaning!
ALL writing
So:
Whether your word is
PICTURE
or
or
obrázek
An early division of labor theory:
Orthographic Depth
orthography phonology
semantics
Orthographic depth hypothesis:shallow: more orth-phon-semdeep: more orth-semEnglish: both
1980sKatz, Turvey,Haskins Labs
Among alphabetic writing systems, English is unusual
many inconsistenciesunlike Finnish, Italian, Russian, Korean,
others
orth-->phon is a big issue for English learnersnot for everyone else
Czech
We don’t want theories of reading to be based on the outlier data!
It’s true that written English differs from shallower alphabetic systems
Assumptions derived from English may not be valid.Findings differ in important respects.
But, there are no “outlier” orthographies. Just:Different tradeoffs between writing systems and languages
Is English an outlier?
For example, Learning to read: are shallow orthographies easier?
Case study: Welsh vs. English
• Welsh: shallow English: deep• Different schools, same communities• Natural controls for SES etc.
(These are older studies, Marketa.)
Ellis & Hooper, 2001: Welsh-reading 7 year olds correctly name twice as many words as English readers
Spencer & Hanley, 2003: 6 year olds
Out of 30 items/condition
Similar findings in other languages
ItalianSpanishGermanFrenchFinnishSerbianTurkishAlbanianothers
Handbook of Orthography and Literacy,Joshi & Aron (Eds.), Erlbaum 2006
Seymour et al. (2003)Ziegler et al. (2010)
Czech?
Issue: These studies equate “reading” with “reading aloud”
Question:What is the relationship between reading aloud and comprehension?
Not tested or not tested in detail.
The word “comprehension” does not occur in this article.
Why not?
1. Many studies of English show that learning orth-phon is hardReading aloud is related to comprehension skill
2. Therefore, writing systems that make it easier to learn orth-phon should be easier to learn to read = comprehend
Case where thinking was too tied to studies of English.
But Reading Aloud ≠ Reading
I shall demonstrate…
1. Dissociations of reading aloud and comprehension
Good reading aloudZero comprehension
Bar Mitzvah Languages
• Must be able to read Hebrew aloud• Do not have to comprehend• Can be done if the writing system is shallow• Which vowelled Hebrew is.
Welsh: also a very good Bar Mitzvah language!
For the Bar/Bat Mitzvah, the boy/girl
Do Shallow Orthographies Promote Better Comprehension?
Not in the Welsh-English studiesEllis and Hooper
Pronunciation Welsh > EnglishComprehension English > Welsh*
Hanley et al.Comprehension English > WelshCorrelation between pronunciation, comprehension: English highly significant Welsh n.s.
“This result suggests that a transparent orthography does not confer any advantages as far as reading comprehension is concerned. As comprehension is clearly the goal of reading this finding is potentially reassuring for teachers of English.”
Hanley et al. 2004
What about other Bar Mitzvah Languages?
Turkish: Aydin Durgunoğlu has looked at both reading aloud and comprehension in detail
“Phonological awareness and decoding develop rapidly in both young and adult readers of Turkish because of the transparent orthography and the special characteristics of phonology and morphology. However, reading comprehension is still a problem.”
Durgunoğlu, 2006
Also true of other shallow orthographies?
Czech?
English speakers all have (or had) words of this sort in our vocabularies.
2. People comprehend words they cannot pronounce correctly
URANUS “URINE-OUS?”
EgregiousPiquantSuaveRapportQuayNon-pareilAutomataChaosCoitus
If we tested my reading aloud, I might perform more poorly than Welsh readers too.
3. How shallow are shallow orthographies?
Writing systems are not transcriptions of speech.
Information relevant to pronunciation is left out.
Creates limit on strictly orth-phon-sem processing.
Example: Serbo-Croatian, the original “shallow” orthography
Grapheme-phoneme correspondences easy, but not sufficientPronunciation requires more
syllabic stress: pitch accent:ZATvori prisons RIBA fish vs. to scrubzatVORi to shut LUK onion vs. arch
PROIZvodi productsproizVODi to produce
A lot like English!CONductconDUCT
Czech?
4. What prevents people from learning orth-->sem?Even in shallow orthographies?
Harm & Seidenberg (2004) division of labor model learned
Orth-phon-semOrth-sem
At the same time.
Maybe people do too.
5. If shallow is so GREAT, what about Hebrew?
It’s shallow all right…
… but they leave out the vowels!
6. And what about the spoken language?
• Writing systems differ• So do the languages they represent
Comprehension depends on both!
Gough, Simple view of reading
Decoding X Spoken language comprehension
Orthographic depth Morphological complexity
DEEPER SHALLOWERMorphologically simple Morphologically complex
English, Chinese Finnish, Serbian, Italian, RussianAlbanian, Welsh, Spanish, etc.
Czech?
Why would this relation hold, in general?
Consider Serbo-Croatian
• They get the spelling-sound correspondences for free
• But the morphology is very complex!
3 genders 2 numbers 7 cases
masc sing nominativefem plural genitiveneuter dative
accusative instrumental locative vocativeCzech
Mirkovic, Seidenberg, Joanisse (Cognitive Science, 2011)
Model of learning Serbian inflectional system
Now: imagine learning to read Serbian if, as in English,many letters had multiple pronunciations
A few consonants like C and GEach vowel represents many sounds
This additional level of complexity would make the system vastly more difficult to learn.
Too hard!
Contrast: Learning to read in English
• NOT: one spelling - one sound– But, irregulars are mostly short, high-frequency
words– And not arbitrary: HAVE is not “glorp”
• The inflectional system is trivial
– Number on nouns, tense and number on verbs– Makes words shorter too
Grapholinguistic Equilibrium
The simple view of writing systems and reading:G = orth opacity x linguistic complexity)
English: high opacity, low complexitySerbian: low opacity, high complexity
Languages/writing systems tend to keep G constant.
Languages get the writing systems they deserve
In other words
(why English spelling reform is pointless)
Even more broadly
Writing systems provide cues about sound and meaning
Late Hieroglyphics
Hememu = “humanity”
Sound cues
+
Meaning cues
(man, woman, many)
meaningsound
Chinese
Semantic cue“radical”
Sound cue“phonetic”
“Mother”
In Hebrew and ArabicK-T-B
In EnglishRedhead
Blockhead
Deadheads
Morphemes = convergence of sound and meaning
In Serbo-Croatian
all related to “advisor”
Lemmas = strong semantic cues
In Czech
Conclusions
• Most comparative research on reading has focused on reading aloud– definitely easier in shallow orthographies
• However, comprehension depends on knowledge of spoken language
• Spoken languages vary in “morphological depth” and other ways
• Tradeoffs between properties of writing systems and languages = grapholinguistic equilibrium
• Writing systems are codes for conveying sound + meaning, universally.
meaning
spelling sound
context
Thanks for listening!
Are Some Writing Systems Easier
to Learn to Read?We won’t know without taking into account properties of spoken language
But it doesn’t look like it.
But, additional assumptions:
• Each code is learned,constrained by other codes;
• Interactivity, not modularity;
• Information encoded by collections of units, etc.
Not specific to reading.
Every theory/model must have these basic elements
What is different about “dual-route” models (e.g., DRC, CDP+):
meaning
spelling sound
context
But, for what?
Also: Models don’t address computation of meaning!
Millions of readers taught by Whole Language Method!
No no no!
In the US there are many people who are poor at pronouncing words and nonwords aloud:
X
orthographyphonology
“Dual-route” models are different!!!
Two routes to phonology
Lexical route
Nonlexical route
Not about computing meaning!
Other talk!
University of Wisconsin-Madison
A birthplace of American psychology(1886)
NRC rankings, 2010
DRC
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