Chapter 4: The reading process is different for different orthographies: the orthographic depth hypothesis.
| Number | 840 |
|---|---|
| Year | 1992 |
| Drawer | 15 |
| Entry Date | 07/20/1998 |
| Authors | Katz, Leonard, and Frost, Ram. |
| Contact | |
| Publication | Orthography, Phonology, Morphology, and Meaning, edited by R. Frost and L. Katz. Elsevier Science Publishers, B.V. 67-84. |
| url | http://www.haskins.yale.edu/Reprints/HL0840.pdf |
| Abstract | It has been said that most languages get the orthography they deserve and there is a kernel of truth in that statement. There is generally an underlying rationale of efficiency in matching a language’s characteristic phonology and morphology to a written form. Although the final product may turn out to be more suitable for some languages than for others, there are certain basic principles of the fit that can be observed. The attempt to make an efficient match between the written form, on the one hand, and morphology and phonology, on the other, typically determines whether the orthography chosen is a syllabary, a syllabary-cum-logography, or an alphabet. Further, within the group of alphabetic orthographies itself, there are varying degrees of dependence on the strict alphabetic principle: the range of correspondence between grapheme and phoneme varies both in consistency and completeness. The degree of this dependence is to some extent a function of a language’s characteristic phonology and morphology, just as was the choice of the kind of orthography itself. We discuss here what this varying dependence on the alphabetic principle may mean for the mental processes involved in reading and writing. |
| Notes |
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