Double consonants in English: graphemic, morphological, prosodic and etymological determinants

Berg, Kristian

doi:10.1007/s11145-015-9610-z

Cited by 14 publications

(14 citation statements)

References 8 publications

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“…Conversely, double consonants were exceptional (\1%) when preceded by a long vowel. Note that the predictive relation between vowel quality and doubling might be supplemented by a retrospective relation since, in trochaic structures, single consonants are preceded by a long vowel in 58% of the cases (Berg, 2016).…”

Section: Introductionmentioning

confidence: 99%

Letter coding affects movement production in word writing: an English–Italian cross-linguistic study

et al. 2017

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Section: Introductionmentioning

confidence: 99%

Letter coding affects movement production in word writing: an English–Italian cross-linguistic study

et al. 2017

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“…Most researchers have implicitly accepted these ideas, considering spellings such as ‹dagit› for the nonword /ˈdaeɡɨt/ or ‹palor› for the word pallor to show a lack of knowledge about the regularities of English (e.g., Cassar & Treiman, 1997;Deacon et al, 2011). However, quantitative studies of the English vocabulary demonstrate that phonological context is not the only influence on consonant doubling (Berg, 2016;Treiman & Boland, 2017). That is, the lack of medial consonant doubling in words like valor and panic is not a surprise given the ending sequences, and these spellings do not necessarily have to be memorized as exceptions.…”

Section: Discussionmentioning

confidence: 99%

“…People's behavior reflects a pattern in the English spelling system. Specifically, in morphologically simple two-syllable words with first-syllable stress and a single medial consonant phoneme that corresponds to a consonant that may double in spelling (e.g., not /ʃ/, because ‹sh› cannot double),a double medialconsonantoccurs in 69% of words with a short first-syllable vowel but in less than 1% of words with a long first-syllable vowel (Berg, 2016). Discussions of the English spelling system that are oriented toward teachers cover this pattern (Carreker, 2005;Templeton & Morris, 1999), and it is sometimes explicitly taught in elementary schools.…”

Section: Introductionmentioning

confidence: 99%

“…These behaviors reflect patterns in the English vocabulary. Medial consonant doubling occurs only about 1% of the time when the preceding vowel is spelled with more than one letter, and it also varies as a function of the letters that follow the consonant (Berg, 2016;Treiman & Boland, 2017). For example, consonant doubling is less common in words with final /ɨk/ when this sequence is written as ‹ic› (e.g., panic, magic) than when it is written as ‹ick› or ‹ock› (gimmick, haddock).…”

Section: Introductionmentioning

confidence: 99%

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Phonological and graphotactic influences on spellers’ decisions about consonant doubling

Treiman

Wolter

2018

Mem Cogn

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Even adults sometimes have difficulty choosing between single- and double-letter spellings, as in spinet versus spinnet. The present study examined the phonological and graphotactic factors that influence adults' use of single versus double medial consonants in the spelling of nonwords. We tested 111 adults from a community sample who varied widely in spelling ability. Better spellers were more affected than less good spellers by phonological context in that they were more likely to double consonants after short vowels and less likely to double consonants after long vowels. Although descriptions of the English writing system focus on the role of phonology in determining use of single versus double consonants, participants were also influenced by graphotactic context. There was an effect of preceding graphotactic context, such that spellers were less likely to use a double consonant when they spelled the preceding vowel with more than one letter than when they spelled it with one letter. There was also an effect of following graphotactic context, such that doubling rate varied with the letters that the participant used at the end of the nonword. These graphotactic influences did not differ significantly in strength across the range of spelling ability in our study. Discussion focuses on the role of statistical learning in the learning of spelling patterns, especially those patterns that are not explicitly taught.

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“…In English, individual final letter sequences reliably co-occur with consonant doubling or non-doubling (cf. Berg, 2016). For example, almost all words with final ‹-le› occur with consonant doubling (e.g.…”

Section: Graphotactic Spellingsmentioning

confidence: 99%

Some implications of English spelling for morphological processing

Aronoff

Berg

Heyer³

2016

Self Cite

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In alphabetic writing systems, the most consistent correspondences hold between written and spoken segments. Although English spelling uses the Roman alphabet and is thus largely phonographic, it also encodes non-phonological distinctions such as those among homophonic words (e.g., pair, pare, pear). We review evidence that English spelling is to some extent morphographic at the level of suffixes: some suffixes (e.g. -s and -ed) have a single constant spelling (‹-s› and ‹ed›), despite the fact that they vary in phonological realization (-s is realized as [z], [s], or [əz], depending on the preceding segment); while other suffixes (e.g. ‑ic) are spelled differently from homophonous word-final phonological sequences (e.g. ‹relic› vs. ‹relick›). We explore the implications of our research for psycholinguistic findings on morphological processing of written English, with a special focus on ‘affix stripping’ processes. Psycholinguistic research has largely assumed the straightforward linguistic validity of morphographic spelling, without appreciating either its typologically unusual nature or the subtle and complex relation that it bears to morphology, phonology, and semantics.

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Double consonants in English: graphemic, morphological, prosodic and etymological determinants

Cited by 14 publications

References 8 publications

Letter coding affects movement production in word writing: an English–Italian cross-linguistic study

Letter coding affects movement production in word writing: an English–Italian cross-linguistic study

Phonological and graphotactic influences on spellers’ decisions about consonant doubling

Some implications of English spelling for morphological processing

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