This thesis presents graphemic analysis of the work "Summovník" by Jan Augusta, based on transliteration of selected stretches of texts. Identified as late as in 2012, the work has not been described yet. The work represents a print of the humanistic period, therefore the principal objective was to find out how two orthographic systems of the period - diagraphic and diacritic - interact. The analysis was divided into several chapters corresponding to the examined features that were statistically evaluated. The interpretation was especially based on two key 16th century grammars of Czech - the Grammar of Náměšť and the "Czech Grammar" by Jan Blahoslav. The transliterated text has been analysed in Microsoft Word 2007 by means of "Find and Replace" with "Use of substitute characters" instrument. The work of "Summovník" in this partially transliterated form can be used as a baseline for preparation of an edition of this work.

A Dissertation Submitted to the Faculty of Science University of the Witwatersrand, Johannesburg for the Degree of M aster of Science November 1987

A thesis submitted to the faculty of arts, University of the Witwatersrand Johannesburg in fulfilment of the requirements for the degree of Master of Arts. Johannesburg, 1991. / Literacy includes both the ability to read and to spell. Yet until recently, and despite its importance, there has been less research on spelling than on reading. Perhaps this was because writing as a linguistic skill was considered in a marginal way as secondary to, and derivative from, speech. It was conceptualised as a photograph of spoken language (de Saussure, 1916), or as a code of transcription (Luria, 1970) with spelling presumed to be based on inner pronunciation of the phonic (sound) forms of the spoken language. Cognitive researchers were slow to recognise that written language is neither a complete isomorph of the spoken Language (Gelb,1963),nor a process of reading-in-reverse (Bradley and Bryant, 1979; Bradley, 1983), but rather, is a complex and autonomous system of representation, both of the deeper lexical-morphemic levels of language (Venezky,1970; Ellis, 1982), as well as of the mappings of phonology. As such, spelling proficiency is a highly complex intellectual achievement in its own right, and is worthy of psycholinguistic interest in the same way as other language-based skills, such as speech perception, speech production and reading comprehension. [Abbreviated Abstract. Open document to view full version] / GR2017

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Literacy is widespread, but little is known about its effect on cognitive processes. Research suggests that learning to read is beneficial because it fosters awareness of the structure of language, and orthographic images of words and letters may provide memory anchors for speech. The general hypothesis of this thesis is that orthographic images aid oral language activities. Adults who are illiterate perform poorly on initial phoneme manipulation tasks, suggesting that learning to read fosters phonemic knowledge. However, literate adults may use orthographic images to aid phoneme manipulation, so this conclusion may be false. In the 11 experiments reported in this thesis, literate English speakers performed phoneme deletion/addition tasks with word and non word items - half had orthographically matched stimuli and responses (wage-age), and half were mismatched (worth-earth). Longer reaction times were expected for orthographically mismatched than matched items. The results of experiments are discussed in some detail. Future experiments are suggested to validate the models, and to investigate further the role of orthographic images in oral language activities. / Doctor of Philosophy (PhD)

Learning to spell requires integration of phonological, orthographic, and morphological knowledge. Historically, spelling development has been characterized by linear stages in which children learn to use these knowledge bases in succession. A more recent view challenges the linearity of this approach and proposes that spelling development from the beginning is characterized by the simultaneous interaction of all three linguistic factors. Minimal research exists that qualitatively investigates the integration of these three factors, especially as noted in derivational morphology. The study's purpose was to investigate spelling accuracy and qualitatively analyze the morphological error patterns of typically developing children, ages 8-15 years, for a future comparison to children with autism spectrum disorders (ASD). Twenty-nine typically-developing children were age- and gender-matched to children with ASD from a companion study (Wiggins, 2009) to conduct quantitative comparisons. After inclusion measures were administered, the children completed a spelling test that analyzed various morphological aspects of spelling, including homonyms, inflections, and derivations. Results of the quantitative analyses revealed that children in the ASD group made significantly more errors than children in the typically developing group on the spelling test. Nevertheless, performances across the morphological categories tested were similar across groups and followed the pattern described in previous research (Carlisle, 1988, 2000). Qualitative analysis used a unique coding system, the Phonological, Orthographic, and Morphological Analysis of Spelling (POMAS; Silliman, Bahr, & Peters, 2006), which allowed for analysis by linguistic category (e.g., phonological, orthographic, morphological) and specific error features (e.g., letter-sound correspondences, consonant errors, vowel digraphs, etc.). Overall, the typically developing children produced the most errors in orthography, followed by phonology, with the fewest errors being attributed to morphology. Four major linguistic feature error patterns emerged involving vowel errors, letter doubling confusion, misspelled derivational suffixes, and sonorant cluster reduction. Spelling performance on the experimental spelling measure was correlated with age, but was not correlated with parents' educational level or language-related subtests. Younger children made more errors than older children in all morphological categories. Findings supported the importance of qualitative investigations of spelling errors in order to effectively characterize linguistic skill in spelling.

The present study was designed to examine differences between subtypes of readers and spellers in their performance on several phonological, orthographic, and memory tasks. A central question involved whether subtypes of readers and spellers could be distinguished based on their performance across the tasks administered. Based on their performance on a standardized achievement test, fourth and fifth grade children (N=50) were classified as having no difficulties with reading and spelling (good readers and spellers), difficulties with spelling, but not reading (mixed readers and spellers), or difficulties with both reading and spelling (poor readers and spellers). Each student was given a series of tasks to assess their use of phonological and orthographic information for memory and spelling. These tasks included: 1) rhyme judgment, 2) cued recall, 3) reading pronounceable pseudowords, 4) deciding which of. two pseudowords looks most like a real word, and 5) reporting on the kinds of strategies used to spell words. An error analysis was also conducted. Students with reading and spelling difficulties performed consistently lower than good and mixed readers and spellers on tasks assessing their use of phonological information. Good and mixed readers and spellers were not distinguishable on these tasks. Students with no reading and spelling difficulties or with spelling difficulties only performed better than poor readers and spellers on some tasks assessing orthographic processing. Specifically, mixed readers and spellers were distinguishable from good readers and spellers by their poorer recall of visually similar words. Good and poor subtypes were not distinguishable on this task. Poor readers and spellers also achieved comparable scores to the good and mixed readers and spellers on a measure of orthographic awareness. Overall results provided evidence supporting subtypes of reading and spelling ability groups. Students with no reading and spelling difficulties, or difficulties with spelling but not reading were similar in their use of phonological information. However, students with reading and spelling difficulties were more similar to the good readers and spellers in their use of orthographic information in memory. The findings from the present study have implications to subsequent research examining spelling ability, provide further evidence of the unique processing characteristics of the paradoxical good reader but poor speller, and suggest the possibility of unique programming needs to remediate spelling difficulties in mixed and poor readers and spellers.

This study compared differences in spelling achievement among groups of students who were high, average, and low achievers. The study attempted to determine, over 7 weeks, any treatment effects resulting from students being cooperatively grouped for spelling instruction. A student's level of achievement and type of grouping for spelling instruction were variables contrasted between intact treatment and control classes of students.This study used six intact classes of intermediate grade elementary children. Three classes were grouped cooperatively for spelling instruction and three classes were not grouped cooperatively for spelling instruction. The study included the scores of 135 students, 68 in the control group and 67 in the treatment group. Normal curve equivalent scores from an existing standardized achievement test were used to classify students as high, average, or low achievers.A student's level of achievement was an attribute variable that yielded proportional cell sizes in order to conduct an analysis of variance. The dependent variable was the total number of words that each student spelled correctly on seven weekly spelling tests. A t-test was used to examine the NCE scores of the treatment and control groups to verify that no significant differences existed between the groups prior to the study.Teachers were trained in a series of four sessions to implement cooperative learning using Student Teams Achievement Divisions. The sessions provided activities designed to encourage the development of collaborative skills prior to initiating treatment. A bonus point system was used to reinforce the collaborative skills.The analysis of variance tested four null hypotheses at the .05 level of confidence. None of the null hypotheses were rejected. The following results were suggested:1. Intermediate children achieve equally well regardless of how they are grouped for spelling instruction.2. High, average, and low achieving students achieve equally well regardless of how they are grouped for spelling instruction.3. Low achieving students achieve significantly different from high and average achieving students.The findings of the study suggest that cooperative grouping for spelling instruction is as effective as spelling instruction without cooperative grouping regardless of student level of achievement. / Department of Elementary Education

The purpose of this study was to compare two methods of spelling instruction, the test-study method and study-test method, with the spelling achievement of selected fourth grade students. The effects of gender and spelling ability level on the spelling method were also studied. The participants were 80 fourth grade students from four intact classrooms in two elementary schools in a small suburban midwestern school district.Third grade standardized test scores were collected from students' permanent record cards and used for grouping students into spelling ability levels. A Spelling Criterion-Referenced Test was used as a pretest (covariate) and a posttest (dependent variable). An analysis of covariance was used to test three null hypotheses at the .05 level of significance. The three null hypotheses were not rejected. The following results were suggested:1. Both fourth grade boys and girls achieve equally well in spelling whether they use the test-study method or the study-test method of spelling instruction.2. Fourth grade students achieve equally well in spelling whether they use the test-study method or the study-test method of spelling instruction.3. Fourth grade girls and boys achieve equally well in spelling.Teachers should consider integrating spelling into all areas of the language arts by supplementing the spelling textbook with words the children are using in their writing. / Department of Elementary Education

This research expands our understanding of the relationship between orthographic knowledge and phoneme perception by investigating how orthographic knowledge affects phoneme perception not only in the first language (L1) but also in the second language (L2), and an unfamiliar language (L0). Specifically, this research sought not only to confirm that L1 orthographic knowledge influences L1 phoneme perception, but also to determine if L1 orthographic knowledge influences L2 and L0 phoneme perception, particularly as it relates to native English speakers. Via a phoneme counting task, 52 participants were divided into two experimental groups—one with a Russian L0 and one with a Mandarin L0—and counted phonemes in words from their L1 (English) and L0. In addition, two subgroups of participants also counted phonemes in their L2 (either Russian or Mandarin). The stimuli for each language were organized along two parameters: 1) match (half with consistent letter-phoneme correspondences and half with inconsistent correspondences) and 2) homophony (half with cross-language homophonous counterparts and half without homophonous counterparts). The assumption here was that accuracy and RT differences would indicate an effect of orthographic knowledge on phoneme perception. Four-way repeated measures ANOVAs analysed the data along four independent factors: group, language, homophone, and match. Overall, the results support the hypotheses and indicate that L1 orthographic knowledge facilitates L1 and L0 phoneme perception when the words have consistent letter-phoneme correspondences but hinders L1 and L0 phoneme perception when the words have inconsistent correspondences. Similarly, the results indicate that L2 orthographic knowledge facilitates L2 phoneme perception with consistent words but hinders L2 phoneme perception with inconsistent words. On a more specific level, results indicate that not all letter-phoneme mismatches are equal in terms of their effect on phoneme perception, for example mismatches in which one letter represents two sounds (e.g., <x> = /ks/) influence perception more so than do mismatches in which one or more letters are silent (e.g. <sh> = /ʃ/). Findings from this research support previous claims that orthographic and phonological information are co-activated in speech processing even in the absence of visual stimuli (e.g., Blau et al., 2008; Taft et al., 2008; Ziegler & Ferrand 1998), and that listeners are sensitive to orthographic information such that it may trigger unwanted interference when the orthographic and phonological systems provide conflicting information (e.g., Burnham, 2003; Treiman & Cassar, 1997). More importantly, findings show that orthographic effects are not limited to L1. First, phoneme perception in unfamiliar languages (L0) is also influenced by L1 orthography. Second, phoneme perception in L2 is influenced by L2 orthgraphic interference. In fact, L2 orthographic effects appear to override any potential L1 orthographic effects, suggesting orthographic effects are language-specific. Finally, the preliminary findings on the different types of letter-phoneme mismatches show that future research must tease apart the behaviours of different kinds of letter-phoneme inconsistencies. Based on the findings, this dissertation proposes the Bipartite Model of Orthographic Knowledge and Transfer. The model identifies two components within L1 orthographic knowledge: abstract and operational. The model predicts that abstract L1 orthographic knowledge (i.e., the general assumptions and principles about the function of orthography and its relationship to phonology) transfers into nonnative language processing regardless of whether the listeners/speakers are familiar with the nonnatiave language (e.g., Bassetti, 2006; Vokic, 2011). In contrast, the model predicts that operational knowledge (i.e., what letters map to what phonemes) transfers into the nonnative language processing in the absence of nonnative orthographic knowledge (i.e., the L0), but does not transfer in the presence of nonnative orthographic knowledge (i.e., the L2). Rather, L2-specific operational knowledge is created based partly on the transferred abstract knowledge. The research here contributes to the body of literature in four ways. First, the current research supports previous findings and claims regarding orthographic knowledge and native language speech processing. Second, the L2 findings provide insight into the relatively sparse—but growing—understanding of the relationship between L1 and L2 orthography and nonnative speech perception. Third, this research offers a unified (albeit preliminary) account of orthographic knowledge and previous findings by way of the Bipartite Model of Orthographic Knowledge and Transfer. / Graduate