DOCSLIB.ORG

English Alphabetic Code with the International Phonetic Alphabet a E

Total Page：16

File Type：pdf, Size：1020Kb

Download full-text PDF Read full-text

Load more

English Alphabetic Code with the International Phonetic Alphabet The English language has a fascinating history – but this has resulted in a complex alphabetic code for the writing system whereby the 26 letters of the alphabet represent the 44 or so smallest sounds identifiable in English speech in three complicated ways: 1. one sound (phoneme) can be represented by one, two, three or four letters: e.g. /a/ a in apple, /f/ ph in photograph, /igh/ igh in night, /oa/ ough in dough 2. one sound can be represented by multiple spelling alternatives (graphemes): e.g. /oa/: o, oa, ow, oe, o-e, eau, ough 3. one grapheme (letter or letter group) can represent multiple sounds: e.g. ‘ough’: /oa/ though, /or/ thought, long /oo/ through, /ou/ plough, /u/ thorough On this Alphabetic Code Chart, the units of sound (phonemes or combined phonemes) are shown in slash marks. Vowel sounds are shown in red and consonant sounds are shown in blue. The vowel sounds provide the main volume and depth in spoken words whereas the consonant sounds are generally much quieter and sometimes very high-pitched such as /s/ and /t/. Teachers need to teach the separate units of sounds carefully, avoiding the added ‘schwa’ or “uh” sound: e.g. “sss” not “suh”; “t” not “tuh”. units of sound simple code complex code graphemes or spelling alternatives information + IPA symbols key words + key words which are code for the sounds /a/ a The Synthetic Phonics Teaching Principles /æ/ apple /e/ Teach the KNOWLEDGE of the e -ea -ai alphabetic code; that is, the /ɛ/ letter/s-sound correspondences. egg head said again /i/ Teach the THREE CORE SKILLS: i -y /ɪ/ insect cymbals 1. DECODING: Sound out and /o/ blend all-through-the-printed-word o wa qua alt for reading unknown words. /ɒ/ octopus watch qualify salt 2. ENCODING: Orally segment /u/ u o -ou -ough (identify) the sounds all-through-the- /ʌ/ spoken-word for spelling; then select umbrella son touch thoroughfare the correct graphemes AS CODE FOR the identified sounds in that /ai/ particular word. ai -ay a -ae a-e first aid tray table sundae cakes 3. HANDWRITING: Hold the /eɪ/ pencil with the tripod grip and form -ey -ea eigh -aigh correctly the 26 upper case and 26 prey break eight straight lower case letters on writing lines. Copyright Debbie Hepplewhite 2013 Page 1 of 6 /ee/ Teach a simple code (basic or ee ea e e-e transparent) first; that is, mainly one spelling for each sound at a rate of eel eat emu concrete two to five letter/s-sound /i:/ correspondences per week. The -ey -ie -ine simple code is part of the complex code – a first step towards key chief sardines between teaching the alphabetic code. /i and ee/ -y -ey -ie Keep the simple code revised and sunny monkey movie begin to introduce spelling and /igh/ pronunciation alternatives of -igh -ie i -y i-e ei the complex code (extended, advanced or opaque code) at a rate /aɪ/ night tie behind fly bike eider duck appropriate to the age, stage and /oa/ ability of the learners. oa ow o -oe o-e oak tree bow yo-yo oboe rope APPLICATION Provide a cumulative bank of words, /əʊ/ sentences and texts at code level: -ough -eau 1. to model blending, segmenting dough plateau for spelling, and handwriting /y+oo/ 2. for each learner to practise -ue u u-e ew eu his or her growing skills of blending, /j/ + /u:/ segmenting and handwriting barbecue unicorn tube new pneumatic increasingly independently. short /oo/ -oo -oul -u Provide cumulative, decodable /ʊ/ reading books at code level. book should push ‘Two-pronged’ long /oo/ oo -ue u-e -ew -ui teaching approach Teach a systematic, planned moon blue flute crew fruit synthetic phonics programme /u:/ alongside incidental teaching of -ou -o -ough any letter/s-sound correspondences as required for differentiation, wider soup move through reading and spelling and for the /oi/ wider curriculum - for individuals, oi oy groups and whole classes. /ɔɪ/ ointment toy Copyright Debbie Hepplewhite 2013 Page 2 of 6 /ou/ Accents ou ow -ough Teaching the English alphabetic code is not an ‘exact science’ and /aʊ/ ouch ! owl plough accents need to be taken into /ar/ account at all times along with the ar a alm -alf -alves notion of ‘tweaking’ (modifying) /ɑ:/ pronunciation when decoding to artist father palm half calves reach the correct target word or /or/ preferred pronunciation. or oar -oor ore -our fork oars door snore four Schwa effect for reading /ɔ:/ Modifying pronunciation also helps aw au -al war quar to raise awareness of the schwa or /aw/ effect (unstressed syllables) whereby, dawn sauce chalk wardrobe quarter dependent upon in reality, a sound close to /u/ is the regional or spoken translation of the written national accents augh ough code in words such as ‘sofa’ (sofu), ‘faster’ (fastu), ‘little’ (littul), caught thought ‘around’ (uround). This is common. /ur/or /er/ er ir ur ear wor /ɜ:/ Schwa effect for spelling mermaid birthday nurse earth world Be aware of the schwa effect when ‘schwa /er/’ segmenting spoken words for or ‘schwa /u/’ -er -our -re -ar -or spelling. /ə/ mixer humour theatre collar sailor The ability to spell accurately relies /air/ on a growing awareness of air -are -ear -ere spelling alternatives and /ɛə/ hair hare bear where knowledge of spelling word /eer/ banks (words with the same eer ear -ere -ier spelling and sound). This knowledge /ɪə/ takes much longer to acquire. deer ears adhere cashier Emphasise the process for spelling of /oor/ SOUND-TO-PRINT rather than -oor -ure relying on visual memory and recall /ʊə/ poor sure of letter order and letter names. /y+oor/ Decoding is the reverse process: -ure PRINT-TO-SOUND. /j/+ /ʊə/ pure Copyright Debbie Hepplewhite 2013 Page 3 of 6 units of sound simple code complex code graphemes or spelling alternatives information + IPA symbols key words + key words which are code for the sounds /b/ The notion of a ‘code’ b -bb bu Root all the teaching for decoding /b/ bat rabbit building and encoding in the CODE - that is, /k/ the relationship between the sounds k c -ck ch qu que of speech and their spelling /k/ alternatives (the graphemes). This kit cat duck chameleon bouquet plaque means avoiding the following ideas: /d/ d -dd -ed *that letters ‘say’ sounds - they say /d/ dig puddle rained nothing, they simply prompt us to /f/ generate the sounds either ‘aloud’ f -ff ph -gh or silently ‘in our heads’ /f/ feathers cliff photograph laugh *that there are ‘silent’ letters as in /g/ ‘kn’, ‘wr’, ‘mb’, ‘gn’ and so on – g -gg gu gh -gue these are simply further graphemes /g/ girl juggle guitar ghost catalogue which ARE CODE FOR the sounds – / / this is consistent, for example, with h h wh saying that the grapheme ‘igh’ is /h/ code for the /igh/ sound (we don’t hat who suggest that ‘gh’ are ‘silent letters’ /j/ in the grapheme ‘igh’) j -ge ge gi gy -dge /dʒ/ *that the end letter ‘e’ of split jug cabbage gerbil giraffe gymnast fridge digraphs a-e, e-e, i-e, o-e and u-e /l/ l -ll “make the preceding vowel SAY ITS /l/ NAME” – this is inconsistent with ladder shell modern synthetic phonics teaching rooted in the ‘alphabetic code’. /u+l/ -le -il -al -el To work out ‘the code’, start /əl/ kettle pencil hospital camel from a whole spoken word said /m/ slowly. Orally segment the word m -mm -me -mb -mn into its sounds and map those onto /m/ map hammer welcome thumb columns the graphemes in the written word. Copyright Debbie Hepplewhite 2013 Page 4 of 6 /n/ n -nn kn gn -ne THE SUB-SKILLS OF THE THREE CORE SKILLS /n/ net bonnet knot gnome engine /ng/ DECODING SUB-SKILLS: -ng -n Without print – hear the /ŋ/ individual sounds of a word and gong jungle ‘discern’ the word (= oral /ng+k/ blending): hear /z/ /i/ /p/, say “zip”; -nk -nc hear /k/ /oa/ /t/, say “coat” + /ŋ/ /k/ ink uncle With print – see the graphemes /p/ and say the sounds to automaticity; p -pp see s, say /s/; see oa, say /oa/; see ph, say /f/ /p/ pan puppet Use capital letter resources – not /k+w/ qu -kw just lower case letters. Capital /k/ + /w/ queen awkward letters ARE THE SAME CODE AS /r/ lower case letters. r -rr wr rh ENCODING SUB-SKILLS: /ɹ/ rat arrow write rhinoceros Without print – hear the whole /s/ spoken word said slowly, train the s -ss -ce ce ci cy learner to split the word into its constituent sounds from beginning snake glass palace cents city bicycle to end (= oral segmenting): “zip” /s/ “/z/ /i/ /p/”; “coat” “/k/ /oa/ /t/” (with -se sc -st- ps no print, you can use any sounds) house scissors castle pseudonym -use the left hand, palm facing to /t/ tally the separate sounds onto the t -tt -ed pt -bt thumb and fingers from left to right With print – select grapheme tiles /t/ tent letter skipped pterodactyl debt or magnetic letters, or write the /v/ letters, to spell the sounds identified v -ve [Use manipulatives, such as /v/ grapheme tiles, at the basic code violin dove stage for young learners as they get /w/ to grips with handwriting skills – w wh -u then focus on handwriting to spell.] /w/ web wheel penguin Copyright Debbie Hepplewhite 2013 Page 5 of 6 HANDWRITING SUB-SKILLS: /k+s/ Demonstrate the correct tripod hold -x -ks -cks -kes -cs – for young learners say, “Froggy /k/ + /s/ fox plurals: books ducks cakes I love picnics.
Recommended publications
  • Manual LEIBINGER JET2 Neo

    Manual LEIBINGER JET2 Neo

    Manual LEIBINGER JET2 neo Release R1.00e Group 1 Table of contents Page 1 1.1 Table of contents 1.1 Table of contents ..........................................................................................................1 1.2 Group directory.............................................................................................................9 1.3 Publisher.....................................................................................................................10 1.4 Introduction.................................................................................................................12 1.5 Document information.................................................................................................13 1.6 Guarantee...................................................................................................................13 2. Safety ..............................................................................................................................14 2.1 Dangers......................................................................................................................14 2.2 Safety instructions and recommendations...................................................................14 2.3 Intended use...............................................................................................................16 2.4 Safety sticker ..............................................................................................................17 2.5 Operating staff ............................................................................................................18
  • The Origin of the Peculiarities of the Vietnamese Alphabet André-Georges Haudricourt

    The Origin of the Peculiarities of the Vietnamese Alphabet André-Georges Haudricourt

    The origin of the peculiarities of the Vietnamese alphabet André-Georges Haudricourt To cite this version: André-Georges Haudricourt. The origin of the peculiarities of the Vietnamese alphabet. Mon-Khmer Studies, 2010, 39, pp.89-104. halshs-00918824v2 HAL Id: halshs-00918824 https://halshs.archives-ouvertes.fr/halshs-00918824v2 Submitted on 17 Dec 2013 HAL is a multi-disciplinary open access L’archive ouverte pluridisciplinaire HAL, est archive for the deposit and dissemination of sci- destinée au dépôt et à la diffusion de documents entific research documents, whether they are pub- scientifiques de niveau recherche, publiés ou non, lished or not. The documents may come from émanant des établissements d’enseignement et de teaching and research institutions in France or recherche français ou étrangers, des laboratoires abroad, or from public or private research centers. publics ou privés. Published in Mon-Khmer Studies 39. 89–104 (2010). The origin of the peculiarities of the Vietnamese alphabet by André-Georges Haudricourt Translated by Alexis Michaud, LACITO-CNRS, France Originally published as: L’origine des particularités de l’alphabet vietnamien, Dân Việt Nam 3:61-68, 1949. Translator’s foreword André-Georges Haudricourt’s contribution to Southeast Asian studies is internationally acknowledged, witness the Haudricourt Festschrift (Suriya, Thomas and Suwilai 1985). However, many of Haudricourt’s works are not yet available to the English-reading public. A volume of the most important papers by André-Georges Haudricourt, translated by an international team of specialists, is currently in preparation. Its aim is to share with the English- speaking academic community Haudricourt’s seminal publications, many of which address issues in Southeast Asian languages, linguistics and social anthropology.
  • Daniel O'connell

    Daniel O'connell

    Daniel O’Connell 708 Hoover St., Norman OK 73072 (405) 820-6218 – [email protected] EDUCATION ACCELERATED DUAL DEGREE PROGRAM: Completing Petroleum Engineering undergraduate Degree and an MBA concurrently Michael F. Price College of Business, University of Oklahoma Norman, OK Master of Business Administration; GPA: 4.0/4.0 May 2018 Training the Street; Two-Day Financial Modeling Seminar Mewbourne College of Earth and Energy, University of Oklahoma Norman, OK Bachelor of Science in Petroleum Engineering; GPA: 3.4/4.0 May 2018 EXPERIENCE May 2017- Gulfport Energy Oklahoma City, OK August 2017 Reservoir Engineering, (Internship) Forecasted oil, gas, and water production and revenues for all PDP wells within ARIES Quantified the effect of compression and spacing on already producing wells Created a water type-curve lookup table within ARIES, based on correlations found in Spotfire, to be used in water production forecasting for new wells drilled in the Utica January 2017- OU Center for Creation of Economic Wealth (CCEW) Norman, OK May 2017 Oklahoma Funding Accelerator Consulting Associate (Internship) Semester-long internship working closely with local Oklahoma City startup, SendARide, on business model generation, business plan creation, financial projections, and loan proposal preparation Researched and suggested top priority candidates for adoption of the SendARide app Explored healthcare regulations for possible limitations and opportunities for success May 2016- LINN Energy Agua Dulce, TX August 2016 Production Engineering,
  • X|X Is a Letter in the English Alphabet

    X|X Is a Letter in the English Alphabet

    Example: Let Example: Let U be the set of all senators in Congress. Then U = {x|x is a letter in the English alphabet} = {a, b, c, ..., z} A = {x|x is a vowel} = {a, e, i, o, u} D={x ∈ U| x is a Democrat} R={x ∈ U| x is a Republican} B = {x|x is a letter in the word texas} = { t, e, x, a, s} F={x ∈ U|x is a female} L={x ∈ U|x is a lawyer} Find the following sets and express your answer in a Venn diagram Find the region on the Venn diagram that corresponds to the set of b all senators that are democrats and are female or lawyers. Express this set symbolically. c z d A B y u a e x i t f o w s g v h j r k l m n pq a) What is AB? b) What is Ac B? c) What is A Bc? 1 2 The Number of Elements in a Finite Set Example: A store has 150 clocks in stock. 100 of these clocks have AM or FM radios. 70 clocks had FM circuitry and 90 had AM The number of elements in set A is n(A). circuitry. How many had both AM and FM? How many were AM only? How many were FM only? if A = {x|x is a letter in the English alphabet}, then n(A)=26. Answer: Let If A = ∅ then n(A) = 0. U = {x|x is a clock in stock}, n(U) = A = {x|x is a set that can receive FM}, n(A) = B = {x|x is a set that can receive AM}, n(B) = We are also given that n(A B) = A B y Use the union rule to find the number in AB, x z n(A B) = UNION RULE: Find n(Ac B) = = how many have only AM.
  • The Festvox Indic Frontend for Grapheme-To-Phoneme Conversion

    The Festvox Indic Frontend for Grapheme-To-Phoneme Conversion

    The Festvox Indic Frontend for Grapheme-to-Phoneme Conversion Alok Parlikar, Sunayana Sitaram, Andrew Wilkinson and Alan W Black Carnegie Mellon University Pittsburgh, USA aup, ssitaram, aewilkin, [email protected] Abstract Text-to-Speech (TTS) systems convert text into phonetic pronunciations which are then processed by Acoustic Models. TTS frontends typically include text processing, lexical lookup and Grapheme-to-Phoneme (g2p) conversion stages. This paper describes the design and implementation of the Indic frontend, which provides explicit support for many major Indian languages, along with a unified framework with easy extensibility for other Indian languages. The Indic frontend handles many phenomena common to Indian languages such as schwa deletion, contextual nasalization, and voicing. It also handles multi-script synthesis between various Indian-language scripts and English. We describe experiments comparing the quality of TTS systems built using the Indic frontend to grapheme-based systems. While this frontend was designed keeping TTS in mind, it can also be used as a general g2p system for Automatic Speech Recognition. Keywords: speech synthesis, Indian language resources, pronunciation 1. Introduction in models of the spectrum and the prosody. Another prob- lem with this approach is that since each grapheme maps Intelligible and natural-sounding Text-to-Speech to a single “phoneme” in all contexts, this technique does (TTS) systems exist for a number of languages of the world not work well in the case of languages that have pronun- today. However, for low-resource, high-population lan- ciation ambiguities. We refer to this technique as “Raw guages, such as languages of the Indian subcontinent, there Graphemes.” are very few high-quality TTS systems available.
  • Ligature Modeling for Recognition of Characters Written in 3D Space Dae Hwan Kim, Jin Hyung Kim

    Ligature Modeling for Recognition of Characters Written in 3D Space Dae Hwan Kim, Jin Hyung Kim

    Ligature Modeling for Recognition of Characters Written in 3D Space Dae Hwan Kim, Jin Hyung Kim To cite this version: Dae Hwan Kim, Jin Hyung Kim. Ligature Modeling for Recognition of Characters Written in 3D Space. Tenth International Workshop on Frontiers in Handwriting Recognition, Université de Rennes 1, Oct 2006, La Baule (France). inria-00105116 HAL Id: inria-00105116 https://hal.inria.fr/inria-00105116 Submitted on 10 Oct 2006 HAL is a multi-disciplinary open access L’archive ouverte pluridisciplinaire HAL, est archive for the deposit and dissemination of sci- destinée au dépôt et à la diffusion de documents entific research documents, whether they are pub- scientifiques de niveau recherche, publiés ou non, lished or not. The documents may come from émanant des établissements d’enseignement et de teaching and research institutions in France or recherche français ou étrangers, des laboratoires abroad, or from public or private research centers. publics ou privés. Ligature Modeling for Recognition of Characters Written in 3D Space Dae Hwan Kim Jin Hyung Kim Artificial Intelligence and Artificial Intelligence and Pattern Recognition Lab. Pattern Recognition Lab. KAIST, Daejeon, KAIST, Daejeon, South Korea South Korea [email protected] [email protected] Abstract defined shape of character while it showed high recognition performance. Moreover when a user writes In this work, we propose a 3D space handwriting multiple stroke character such as ‘4’, the user has to recognition system by combining 2D space handwriting write a new shape which is predefined in a uni-stroke models and 3D space ligature models based on that the and which he/she has never seen.
  • Writing Systems Reading and Spelling

    Writing Systems Reading and Spelling

    Writing systems Reading and spelling Writing systems LING 200: Introduction to the Study of Language Hadas Kotek February 2016 Hadas Kotek Writing systems Writing systems Reading and spelling Outline 1 Writing systems 2 Reading and spelling Spelling How we read Slides credit: David Pesetsky, Richard Sproat, Janice Fon Hadas Kotek Writing systems Writing systems Reading and spelling Writing systems What is writing? Writing is not language, but merely a way of recording language by visible marks. –Leonard Bloomfield, Language (1933) Hadas Kotek Writing systems Writing systems Reading and spelling Writing systems Writing and speech Until the 1800s, writing, not spoken language, was what linguists studied. Speech was often ignored. However, writing is secondary to spoken language in at least 3 ways: Children naturally acquire language without being taught, independently of intelligence or education levels. µ Many people struggle to learn to read. All human groups ever encountered possess spoken language. All are equal; no language is more “sophisticated” or “expressive” than others. µ Many languages have no written form. Humans have probably been speaking for as long as there have been anatomically modern Homo Sapiens in the world. µ Writing is a much younger phenomenon. Hadas Kotek Writing systems Writing systems Reading and spelling Writing systems (Possibly) Independent Inventions of Writing Sumeria: ca. 3,200 BC Egypt: ca. 3,200 BC Indus Valley: ca. 2,500 BC China: ca. 1,500 BC Central America: ca. 250 BC (Olmecs, Mayans, Zapotecs) Hadas Kotek Writing systems Writing systems Reading and spelling Writing systems Writing and pictures Let’s define the distinction between pictures and true writing.
  • Phonetics and Phonology in Russian Unstressed Vowel Reduction: a Study in Hyperarticulation

    Phonetics and Phonology in Russian Unstressed Vowel Reduction: a Study in Hyperarticulation

    Phonetics and Phonology in Russian Unstressed Vowel Reduction: A Study in Hyperarticulation Jonathan Barnes Boston University (Short title: Hyperarticulating Russian Unstressed Vowels) Jonathan Barnes Department of Modern Foreign Languages and Literatures Boston University 621 Commonwealth Avenue, Room 119 Boston, MA 02215 Tel: (617) 353-6222 Fax: (617) 353-4641 [email protected] Abstract: Unstressed vowel reduction figures centrally in recent literature on the phonetics-phonology interface, in part owing to the possibility of a causal relationship between a phonetic process, duration-dependent undershoot, and the phonological neutralizations observed in systems of unstressed vocalism. Of particular interest in this light has been Russian, traditionally described as exhibiting two distinct phonological reduction patterns, differing both in degree and distribution. This study uses hyperarticulation to investigate the relationship between phonetic duration and reduction in Russian, concluding that these two reduction patterns differ not in degree, but in the level of representation at which they apply. These results are shown to have important consequences not just for theories of vowel reduction, but for other problems in the phonetics-phonology interface as well, incomplete neutralization in particular. Introduction Unstressed vowel reduction has been a subject of intense interest in recent debate concerning the nature of the phonetics-phonology interface. This is the case at least in part due to the existence of two seemingly analogous processes bearing this name, one typically called phonetic, and the other phonological. Phonological unstressed vowel reduction is a phenomenon whereby a given language's full vowel inventory can be realized only in lexically stressed syllables, while in unstressed syllables some number of neutralizations of contrast take place, with the result that only a subset of the inventory is realized on the surface.
  • Sounds to Graphemes Guide

    Sounds to Graphemes Guide

    David Newman – Speech-Language Pathologist Sounds to Graphemes Guide David Newman S p e e c h - Language Pathologist David Newman – Speech-Language Pathologist A Friendly Reminder © David Newmonic Language Resources 2015 - 2018 This program and all its contents are intellectual property. No part of this publication may be stored in a retrieval system, transmitted or reproduced in any way, including but not limited to digital copying and printing without the prior agreement and written permission of the author. However, I do give permission for class teachers or speech-language pathologists to print and copy individual worksheets for student use. Table of Contents Sounds to Graphemes Guide - Introduction ............................................................... 1 Sounds to Grapheme Guide - Meanings ..................................................................... 2 Pre-Test Assessment .................................................................................................. 6 Reading Miscue Analysis Symbols .............................................................................. 8 Intervention Ideas ................................................................................................... 10 Reading Intervention Example ................................................................................. 12 44 Phonemes Charts ................................................................................................ 18 Consonant Sound Charts and Sound Stimulation ....................................................
  • Part 1: Introduction to The

    Part 1: Introduction to The

    PREVIEW OF THE IPA HANDBOOK Handbook of the International Phonetic Association: A guide to the use of the International Phonetic Alphabet PARTI Introduction to the IPA 1. What is the International Phonetic Alphabet? The aim of the International Phonetic Association is to promote the scientific study of phonetics and the various practical applications of that science. For both these it is necessary to have a consistent way of representing the sounds of language in written form. From its foundation in 1886 the Association has been concerned to develop a system of notation which would be convenient to use, but comprehensive enough to cope with the wide variety of sounds found in the languages of the world; and to encourage the use of thjs notation as widely as possible among those concerned with language. The system is generally known as the International Phonetic Alphabet. Both the Association and its Alphabet are widely referred to by the abbreviation IPA, but here 'IPA' will be used only for the Alphabet. The IPA is based on the Roman alphabet, which has the advantage of being widely familiar, but also includes letters and additional symbols from a variety of other sources. These additions are necessary because the variety of sounds in languages is much greater than the number of letters in the Roman alphabet. The use of sequences of phonetic symbols to represent speech is known as transcription. The IPA can be used for many different purposes. For instance, it can be used as a way to show pronunciation in a dictionary, to record a language in linguistic fieldwork, to form the basis of a writing system for a language, or to annotate acoustic and other displays in the analysis of speech.
  • Roger Lass the Idea: What Is Schwa?

    Roger Lass the Idea: What Is Schwa?

    Stellenbosch Papers in Linguistics, Vol. 15, 1986, 01-30 doi: 10.5774/15-0-95 SPIL 15 (]986) 1 - 30 ON SCHW.A. * Roger Lass The idea: what is schwa? Everybody knows what schwa is or do they? This vene- rable Hebraic equivocation, with its later avatars like "neutral vowel", MUT'melvokaZ, etc. seems to be solidly es­ tablished in our conceptual and transcriptional armories. Whether it should be is another matter. In its use as a transcriptional symbol, I suggest, it represents a somewhat unsavoury and dispensable collection of theoretical and empirical sloppinesses and ill-advised reifications. It also embodies a major category confusion. That is, [8J is the only "phonetic symbol" that in accepted usage has only "phonological" or functional reference, not (precise) phone­ tic content. As we will see, there is a good deal to be said against raJ as a symbol for unstressed vowels, though there is often at least a weak excuse for invoking it. But "stressed schwa", prominent in discussions of Afrikaans and English (among other languages) is probably just about inex­ ·cusable. v Schwa (shwa, shva, se wa , etc.) began life as a device in Hebrew orthography. In "pointed" or "vocalized" script (i.e. where vowels rather than just consonantal skeletons are represented) the symbol ":" under a consonant graph appa­ rently represented some kind of "overshort" and/or "inde­ terminate" vowel: something perhaps of the order of a Slavic jeT', but nonhigh and generally neither front nor back though see below. In (Weingreen 1959:9, note b) it is described as,"a quick vowel-like sound", which is "pronounced like 'e' in 'because'''.
  • Parietal Dysgraphia: Characterization of Abnormal Writing Stroke Sequences, Character Formation and Character Recall

    Parietal Dysgraphia: Characterization of Abnormal Writing Stroke Sequences, Character Formation and Character Recall

    Behavioural Neurology 18 (2007) 99–114 99 IOS Press Parietal dysgraphia: Characterization of abnormal writing stroke sequences, character formation and character recall Yasuhisa Sakuraia,b,∗, Yoshinobu Onumaa, Gaku Nakazawaa, Yoshikazu Ugawab, Toshimitsu Momosec, Shoji Tsujib and Toru Mannena aDepartment of Neurology, Mitsui Memorial Hospital, Tokyo, Japan bDepartment of Neurology, Graduate School of Medicine, University of Tokyo, Tokyo, Japan cDepartment of Radiology, Graduate School of Medicine, University of Tokyo, Tokyo, Japan Abstract. Objective: To characterize various dysgraphic symptoms in parietal agraphia. Method: We examined the writing impairments of four dysgraphia patients from parietal lobe lesions using a special writing test with 100 character kanji (Japanese morphograms) and their kana (Japanese phonetic writing) transcriptions, and related the test performance to a lesion site. Results: Patients 1 and 2 had postcentral gyrus lesions and showed character distortion and tactile agnosia, with patient 1 also having limb apraxia. Patients 3 and 4 had superior parietal lobule lesions and features characteristic of apraxic agraphia (grapheme deformity and a writing stroke sequence disorder) and character imagery deficits (impaired character recall). Agraphia with impaired character recall and abnormal grapheme formation were more pronounced in patient 4, in whom the lesion extended to the inferior parietal, superior occipital and precuneus gyri. Conclusion: The present findings and a review of the literature suggest that: (i) a postcentral gyrus lesion can yield graphemic distortion (somesthetic dysgraphia), (ii) abnormal grapheme formation and impaired character recall are associated with lesions surrounding the intraparietal sulcus, the symptom being more severe with the involvement of the inferior parietal, superior occipital and precuneus gyri, (iii) disordered writing stroke sequences are caused by a damaged anterior intraparietal area.