Are There Onset- and Rime-like Units in Printed Words?
Max Coltheart · 2016
Since the written form of a language represents its spoken form, we might expect the units of the written language to correspond in some way to the units of the spoken language. In particular, the structure of the written word may reflect the phonological structure of the spoken word. Readers may parse written words into orthographic units that correspond to the phono logical units of the spoken language. It is often assumed that spoken words are strings of syllables, which in turn are strings of phonemes. If this assumption is correct, then written words should be parsed into units that correspond to syllables and units that correspond to phonemes. For example, the word CONTAIN may be parsed into the letter groups CON and TAIN since each of these groups corresponds to a syllable (e.g. Spoehr & Smith, 1973). Syllable units themselves may be divided into letters and groups of letters that correspond to phonemes. For example, Coltheart (1978), follow ing Venezky (1970), proposes that readers parse a syllable like SHIP into three units-SH, I, and P. The letters S and H are treated as a group because they together correspond to the phoneme /s / . l In Coltheart’s view, the word SLIP is parsed into S, L, I, and P; SL is not an orthographic unit since the letters S and L each correspond to a phoneme.