Orthography to Phonology and Meaning: Comparisons Across and within Writing Systems

Abstract

Abstract. According to the Universal Writing System Constraint, all writing systems encode language, and thus reflect basic properties of the linguistic system they encode. According to a second universal, the Universal Phonological Principle, the activation of word pronunciations occurs for skilled readers across all writing systems. We review recent research that illustrates the implications of these two universal principles both across and within writing systems. Within the family of alphabetic systems, differences between Korean and English arise in the languages, rather than the orthographies, while the reverse appears to be true for German and English differences. Across writing systems, new Event Related Potentials (ERP) experiments show the robustness of phonology across Chinese and English systems and chart the time course of word reading in Chinese and English for Chinese bilinguals and for English speakers learning Chinese. The ERP results show differences between Chinese and English for both groups and suggest that the time course of word processes and the brain areas identified as sources for the ERP components differ both as a result of writing system and the skill of the reader. We propose the System Accommodation Hypothesis, that reading processes and the neural structures that support them accommodate to specific visual and structural features of a new writing system.

Deficits in Processing Characters in Chinese Developmental Dyslexia: Preliminary Results From Event-related Potentials and Time Frequency Analyses

“…The time windows of the components show a pattern of activities early on in left occipital and right frontal, followed by activities in right occipital and left frontal, respectively, and responses beginning around 400ms post-stimulus in the central region. The involvement of the right hemisphere in processing Chinese characters and that of the left visual area preceding the right homologue are compatible with observations of brain activities of adult Chinese bilinguals during processing of high and low frequency Chinese characters in delayed naming (Liu & Perfetti, 2003) and semantic judgments (Perfetti & Liu, 2005). We speculate that the comparable time windows of occipital (greater negativity) and frontal activities (greater positivity) are associated with the same underlying cognitive processes, perhaps orthographic processing of the stimuli.…”

“…Taking together the patterns of ERSP and ITC, the involvement of occipital, central and frontal regions can be hypothesized to form a reading network, along the line of Liu and Perfetti (2003) and Perfetti and Liu (2005), in Chinese young readers. The idea of a reading network finds tentative support from greater gamma ERS in occipital sites (albeit uncorrected) early on (left), then around 300-400ms (right) and finally after 550ms (left), and for extended periods across the post-stimulus time window at the central electrode, and during 350-550ms in right frontal.…”

“…Processes at these levels can be reflected in ERP components in different time windows post-stimulus (e.g. Liu & Perfetti, 2003;Perfetti & Liu, 2005). To gain insights into brain activities during character recognition of reading impaired children, the method of data analyses differed from most previous work in two aspects.…”

Sociocultural Models of Second-Language Learning of Young Immigrants in Canada

“…Moreover, speakers of Indo-European languages tend to perform beter on the IELTS than those who grew up speaking languages, which have linguistic roots that are distant from English such as Japanese and Korean [17]. Writen languages can also vary markedly in terms of writing systems and scripts that determine ways in which sound-symbol relations are represented, with alphabetic scripts difering from morpho-syllabic scripts [18,19]. For example, Chinese orthography codes language at the syllabic and morphemic level [19]; however, English is writen using an alphabetic system.…”

“…Writen languages can also vary markedly in terms of writing systems and scripts that determine ways in which sound-symbol relations are represented, with alphabetic scripts difering from morpho-syllabic scripts [18,19]. For example, Chinese orthography codes language at the syllabic and morphemic level [19]; however, English is writen using an alphabetic system. Other diferences in writen language include types of scripts, and the direction in which the langue is writen.…”