children's sensitivity to syllables, onsets, rimes, and phonemes

JOBNAME: JECP 61#3 PAGE: 1 SESS: 6 OUTPUT: Wed May 29 20:17:29 1996/xypage/worksmart/tsp000/70987e/1pu

Children’s Sensitivity to Syllables, Onsets, Rimes,and Phonemes

REBECCATREIMAN

Wayne State University

AND

ANDREA ZUKOWSKI

Boston University

It has been argued that children’s performance on phonological awareness tasks varieswith the linguistic level that is tapped by the task. For example, tasks that involve syllablesare thought to be easier than tasks that involve lower-level linguistic units, and tasks thattap the level of onsets are thought to be easier than tasks that require access to singlephonemes. In previous research, however, the linguistic status of a unit has often beenconfounded with its size. Five experiments were carried out in an attempt to disentanglethese variables and so to provide a better test of the linguistic status hypothesis. In the firststudy, preschoolers and kindergartners more readily judged that two stimuli shared abeginning sound when that sound was an onset on its own than when it was part of acluster onset. In two additional experiments, there was an advantage for syllables overrimes in kindergarten and first-grade children when the shared units occurred in themiddle syllables of trisyllabic stimuli. The superiority for syllables was largely masked intwo other studies in which the stimuli that shared a unit rhymed. This latter result suggeststhat children’s familiarity with rhyme can override the syllable advantage. Overall, theresults support the linguistic status hypothesis by indicating that effects of linguistic levelon phonological sensitivity cannot always be reduced to effects of unit size.© 1996

Academic Press, Inc.

For the past 20 or 30 years, researchers have assumed that the acquisition ofan alphabetic writing system requires an explicit representation of the phono-logical structure of speech. This idea has been articulated by Mattingly (1972),

This research was supported by NIH Grants HD20276 and HD00769 and NSF Grant SBR-9020956. Thanks to Patrick Lavery and Sarah Weatherston for their help in testing subjects andthanks to the schools and day-care centers that participated. We are grateful to Charles Read for hissuggestions about this research and to Marie Cassar, Jennifer Gross, and the reviewers for theircomments on a draft of the manuscript. Correspondence and reprint requests should be addressed toRebecca Treiman, Department of Psychology, Wayne State University, 71 W. Warren Ave., DetroitMI 48202. E-mail: [email protected].

JOURNAL OF EXPERIMENTAL CHILD PSYCHOLOGY61, 193–215 (1996)ARTICLE NO. 0014

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Copyright © 1996 by Academic Press, Inc.All rights of reproduction in any form reserved.


Rozin and Gleitman (1977), and many others. One question that has motivated agood deal of research is whether phonological awareness is a precursor to lit-eracy, a by-product of literacy, or both. As Bertelson (1986) pointed out, how-ever, this formulation of the issue may not be the most fruitful way to examinethe relation between phonological awareness and literacy. Phonological aware-ness may not be a single homogeneous ability that emerges all of a piece. Instead,it may be a heterogeneous skill whose components have different properties anddevelop at different times. If phonological awareness is heterogeneous ratherthan homogeneous, different forms of phonological awareness may be linked indifferent ways to the acquisition of reading and spelling skills.Phonological awareness may be heterogeneous in at least two ways. First,

performance on phonological awareness tasks may vary with the cognitive de-mands of the task. Evidence for this sort of heterogeneity exists in the finding thatcomplex tasks, which require more steps to completion and which place a greaterburden on memory, tend to be harder than simple tasks (e.g., Yopp, 1988). Thesecond sort of heterogeneity, and the one that is of primary interest here, concernsthe linguistic level that is tapped by the task. Many researchers have argued thattasks that require attention to syllables are easier than tasks that require attentionto phonemes (Fox & Routh, 1975; Hardy, Stennett, & Smythe, 1973; Leong &Haines, 1978; Liberman, Shankweiler, Fischer, & Carter, 1974; Morais,Cluytens, & Alegria, 1984; Treiman & Baron, 1981; Treiman & Zukowski,1991). Moreover, tasks that require attention to the intrasyllabic units of onsetsand rimes may be easier than tasks that require attention to single phonemes(Bowey & Francis, 1991; Kirtley, Bryant, Maclean, & Bradley, 1989; Treiman &Zukowski, 1991).One explanation for the observed differences among syllables, onsets and

rimes, and single phonemes is that the ability to segment speech into higher-levelphonological units develops earlier than the ability to subdivide these units intotheir lower-level constituents. According to this hypothesis, children first gainthe ability to segment speech into words. They next become able to divide wordsinto syllables, then syllables into intrasyllabic units, and finally intrasyllabic unitsinto phonemes (Treiman, 1992). In this view, it is thelinguistic statusof a unitthat is critical. The linguistic status hypothesis maintains that syllables alwayshave an advantage over intrasyllabic units, which in turn always have an advan-tage over individual phonemes.However, there is another possible explanation for many of the findings just

cited. Thesizeof a unit rather than its linguistic status per se may be the primaryinfluence on performance. Consider the study of Treiman and Zukowski (1991,Experiment 1), which employed a word-pair comparison task. In the syllablecondition, children heard pairs of words such assolid–solemn, compete–repeat,anddelight–unique.They judged whether the words in each pair shared any ofthe same sounds. The correct answers of course would be “yes” for the first twopairs and “no” for the third. Children did better in this syllable condition than ina condition in which the similarity was based on shared onsets (e.g.,blink–blame)

194 TREIMAN AND ZUKOWSKI


or shared rimes (e.g.,spit–wit). In turn, children did better in the onset-rimecondition than in the phoneme condition, in which the stimuli shared only asingle phoneme at the beginning (e.g.,steak–sponge,where the shared phonemeis part of an onset) or the end (e.g.,smoke–tack,where the shared phoneme is partof a rime). These results may reflect the linguistic levels of the units examined,syllables being easier than onsets and rimes, which are in turn easier than pho-nemes. Alternatively, the results may reflect differences in unit size. For ex-ample, the shared portion of the wordssolid andsolemn,whether expressed innumber of phonemes shared or in proportion of phonemes in the words that areshared, is longer than the shared portion of the wordsblink andblame.Similarly,the shared portion ofblink andblameis longer than the shared portion ofsteakandsponge.Because syllables usually contain more phonemes than intrasyllabicunits, which themselves often contain more than one phoneme, the ordering ofdifficulty will usually be syllable, then onset/rime, then phoneme. However, thesize hypothesis predicts that the ordering may change if the units’ sizes change.Indeed, there is evidence that unit size as measured by number of shared

phonemes affects children’s performance in some kinds of sound classificationtasks. Brady, Fowler, and Gipstein (1994), using a task similar to that of Treimanand Zukowski (1991), found a correlation of .72 between phonological aware-ness scores and number of phonemes in the shared units when they countedsyllabic consonants as single phonemes, as children in fact seem to do forsyllabic /r/ and /l/ (Treiman, Berch, Tincoff, & Weatherston, 1993). Walley,Smith, and Jusczyk (1986) had children classify nonwords that shared one (/nuli/-/n{ʃ2/), two (/nuli/-/nuʃ{/), or three (/nuli/-/nul2/) phonemes; the shared pho-nemes constituted a single syllable (/nuli/-/nuʃ{/) or were members of differentsyllables (/bon{/-/goni/). Kindergartners performed better when three phonemeswere shared than when one or two phonemes were shared, pointing to an effectof unit size. The kindergartners did not show a statistically significant superiorityfor shared syllables, although there were nonsignificant trends in this direction.Based on their results, Walley et al. suggested that syllables have no specialstatus at the level at which the perceptual similarity of speech sounds is calcu-lated.Given the evidence for a role of unit size, it becomes important to test the

linguistic status hypothesis by breaking the link that normally exists between thelinguistic level of a unit and its size. That is, one must devise a situation in whichunits that differ in linguistic level are equated for size. We employed this ap-proach in the experiments reported here. Following Treiman and Zukowski(1991), we used a word-pair comparison task in which children heard two wordsor nonwords and judged whether they shared a “sound” in a specified position.This task, like that of Walley et al. (1986), can be seen as tapping children’sjudgments about the similarity of speech sounds.Our first experiment was designed to compare two-consonant onsets to indi-

vidual consonant phonemes. We asked whether children more easily detected thesimilarity between a pair of words when the shared unit was a complete onset, as

195SENSITIVITY TO PHONOLOGY


in pacts–peel,than when the shared unit was part of a cluster onset, as inplan–prow.Pairs of the first type are calledshared onset pairs;pairs of thesecond type areshared part of onset pairs.According to the linguistic statushypothesis, we should find a superiority for shared onset pairs over shared partof onset pairs even though unit size is equated. This prediction follows from theidea that onsets are more accessible than single phonemes. According to the sizehypothesis, no difference between shared onset pairs and shared part of onsetpairs is expected because the number of phonemes that is shared is one in bothcases.

EXPERIMENT 1

Method

Subjects.There were 28 preschoolers (15 boys and 13 girls) with a mean ageof 5 years, 1 month (range 4.4–5.9) and 31 kindergartners (17 boys and 14 girls)with a mean age of 6 years, 0 months (range 5.4–7.2). Two additional preschool-ers and one additional kindergartner who had trouble pronouncing the test wordswere dropped from the study. Another kindergartner was dropped due to experi-menter error. Data for a subset of the kindergartners were presented in Treimanand Zukowski (1991, Experiment 2). All of the children in this and the followingexperiments attended schools in middle and upper middle class suburbs of De-troit, Michigan. All were native speakers of English.Stimuli.The stimuli were 30 pairs of monosyllabic words. There were 20 “yes”

pairs, or words that shared an initial sound. In 10 of the “yes” pairs, the sharedonset pairs, both words had a single-consonant onset and the two words sharedthis onset. An example ispactsandpeel.In the other 10 “yes” pairs, both wordsbegan with a two-consonant cluster. The words shared only the first consonant ofthe cluster. An example of such a shared part of onset pair isplanandprow.Thespecific phonemes that were shared were identical for the two types of “yes”pairs. The words in the “no” pairs had no phonemes in common, as inbombanddrip. The mean frequencies of the words in the shared onset, shared part of onset,and “no” categories were 180, 184, and 207, respectively, according to the normsof Carroll, Davies, and Richman (1971), which are based on written materialsdesigned for children in the third grade and above. We used total word frequen-cies in these calculations and pooled over alternate forms varying in upper-versus lowercase. The mean number of phonemes per word was 3.65 for eachcategory. The average proportion of phonemes that were shared was .27 for bothtypes of “yes” pairs. Four practice pairs were constructed, two “yes” and two“no.” The stimuli for this and the following experiments are listed in the Ap-pendix, which also includes a key to the phonemic transcription.Procedure.The child was told that a puppet liked words that “sounded the

same at the beginning.” When the puppet heard two words that had this property,he was happy. When the puppet heard two words that did not sound the same atthe beginning, he was sad. The four practice pairs were presented with one “yes”



pair first (onset same or part of onset same, randomly chosen for each child), thentwo “no” pairs (their order randomly chosen for each child) followed by the other“yes” pair. For each pair, the experimenter pronounced the first word and askedthe child to say it. This was repeated, if necessary, until the child said the wordcorrectly. The same procedure was followed for the second word of the pair. Theexperimenter then said the word pair again and told the child whether the puppetliked the words and why. The test pairs were presented next. The procedure waslike that for the examples, but now the child had to judge whether the puppetliked each pair. The children were not told whether their responses to test pairswere correct. The experiment was run in a single session and the order of testpairs was randomly chosen for each child.

Results

Table 1 shows the mean proportion of correct responses for each type of pair.As predicted by the linguistic status hypothesis, both groups of children did betteron “yes” pairs that shared a complete onset than on “yes” pairs that shared justpart of an onset, even though the shared unit was a single consonant in both cases.Also, the kindergartners did better than preschoolers on all types of pairs. Toconfirm these impressions, the data for “yes” pairs were analyzed using thefactors of linguistic unit (onset versus part of onset) and grade level (preschoolversus kindergarten). There was a main effect of linguistic unit (F1(1,57)4 17.12,p < .001;F2(1,18)4 8.12,p 4 .011). Pooling over the two gradelevels, children did 8% better when a whole onset was shared than when only thefirst consonant of a cluster onset was shared. There was also a main effect ofgrade (F1(1,57)4 13.75,F2(1,18)4 184.16, bothp < .001). The kindergartnersperformed 28% better than the preschoolers on “yes” pairs. There was no inter-action between linguistic unit and grade (bothp > .60). This latter result indicatesthat the superiority for onsets over parts of onsets held at both grade levels.Analyses of performance on the “no” pairs also revealed a significant effect ofgrade (F1(1,57)4 7.59,p 4 .008; F2(1,9) 4 38.41,p < .001). The kinder-gartners did 19% better than the preschoolers on the “no” pairs.Although the kindergartners outperformed the preschoolers, both groups of

children distinguished between “yes” and “no” pairs to a significant degree. This

TABLE 1Mean Proportion of Correct Responses in Experiment 1 (Standard Deviations in Parentheses)

Pair type and examples

“Yes” pairs

Onset shared Part of onset shared “No” pairs

Grade pacts-peel plan-prow bomb-drip

Preschool .59 (.33) .53 (.34) .70 (.32)Kindergarten .89 (.26) .80 (.29) .89 (.21)



judgment was made by comparing “yes” responses on each type of positive itemto “yes” responses on negative items. For example, we asked whether childrenwere significantly more likely to respond that a pair such asplan–prowsoundedthe same at the beginning than that a pair such asbomb–dripsounded the sameat the beginning. For this and the other experiments, children were considered todistinguish between “yes” and “no” pairs at an above-chance level only ifp < .05according to botht tests across subjects and across items. This procedure takesaccount of the children’s response biases; some children in this and the followingexperiments had a bias to answer “yes” whereas others had a bias to answer “no.”Using the criterion just described, the preschoolers performed above chance onboth types of positive items. The kindergartners also distinguished both types of“yes” pairs from “no” pairs.One might ask whether children’s ability to distinguish positive and negative

pairs reflected an aspect of the experimental stimuli. For 6 of the 10 pairs in the“no” condition, one word began with a single consonant and the other word witha cluster. For all of the “yes” pairs, both words began with the same type of onset,either a cluster or a singleton. Perhaps children noticed this difference between“yes” pairs and “no” pairs and responded “yes” when the two words had the sametype of onset and “no” when they did not. However, performance on the four“no” pairs in which the two words had the same type of onset was almostidentical to performance on the six “no” pairs in which the two words had adifferent type of onset. Although the results of this post hoc comparison must beinterpreted with caution, they suggest that children’s ability to distinguish be-tween positive and negative pairs did not reflect use of the strategy just described.

Discussion

Both the preschoolers and the kindergartners more accurately judged that twowords shared a beginning sound when the initial consonant was an onset on itsown, as inpacts–peel,than when the consonant was part of a cluster onset, as inplan–prow.This held true even though the two types of word pairs were equatedfor the number of shared phonemes (one in each case) and the proportion ofphonemes that the shared consonant represented. The children’s better perfor-mance on thepacts–peeltype pairs supports the linguistic status hypothesis. Itsuggests that whole onsets are easier to access and compare in metalinguistictasks than the individual consonants that make up cluster onsets.The results of this study are similar to those reported by Caravolas and Bruck

(1993) for preschool, kindergarten, and first grade children. Using a comparisontask with pairs of nonwords, these researchers found a small but significantdifference between “yes” pairs that shared the first consonant of a cluster onsetand “yes” pairs that shared a single-consonant onset.The difficulty with cluster onsets that is revealed in the word-pair comparison

task also emerges in other types of phonological awareness tasks in which unitsize is controlled. Several studies have used aphoneme recognition taskin whichchildren judge whether a specified phoneme is present in a series of target words



or nonwords. In this task, children more easily detect a phoneme such as /s/ whenit is the first phoneme of a CVC (consonant–vowel–consonant) syllable, or anonset on its own, than when it is the first phoneme of a CCV (consonant–consonant–vowel) syllable, or part of a two-consonant onset (Bruck & Treiman,1990; Treiman, 1985). For example, the children tested by Treiman, who aver-aged about 51

2years old, correctly said that a syllable like /sɑn/ began with /s/

86% of the time. For syllables like /snɑ/, their accuracy level was significantlylower, 72%. Difficulties with initial clusters also emerge in theinitial phonemeisolation task in which children are asked to separately pronounce the firstphoneme of a word or nonword. For example, children of 4, 5, and 6 are moreable to say thatfool begins with /f/ than thatflewbegins with /f/ (Barton, Miller,& Macken, 1980; Caravolas & Bruck, 1993; Schreuder & van Bon, 1989;Treiman & Weatherston, 1992). Finally,phoneme deletion tasks,in which chil-dren are asked to delete a specified phoneme from a word or nonword andpronounce the result, reveal a marked difficulty with clusters. Although English-speaking children can often delete an initial consonant when it is an onset, evenchildren in the early elementary grades have difficulty deleting just the initialconsonant when it is part of a cluster (Bruck & Treiman, 1990; Caravolas &Bruck, 1993). In the study by Bruck and Treiman, for instance, first and secondgraders (average age almost 71

2) erred over 60% of the time when they were asked

to delete just the first consonant of a spoken CCV nonword such as /floi/. Ratherthan dropping just the /f/ to produce /loi/, children often dropped the whole onsetto produce /oi/. The difficulty with the deletion task continued into the thirdgrade. Thus, a superiority for whole onsets over the individual consonants thatmake up onsets emerges in both simple and complex phonological awarenesstasks with both real words and nonwords. This superiority is seen not only in theword-pair comparison task, which involves relatively passive judgments of thesimilarity of speech sounds, but also in tasks in which children actively manipu-late phonological units. The advantage for onsets over individual phonemes is notan artifact of unit size, for it holds even when the number of phonemes in theonset and part of onset units is the same.Although the children in Experiment 1 did significantly better on pairs of the

pacts–peeltype than on pairs of theplan–prow type, they distinguished bothtypes of “yes” pairs from pairs that did not share any opening phonemes. Thus,even preschoolers were significantly more likely to say that the words in the“yes” pair plan–prowshared a sound at the beginning than that the words in the“no” pair bomb–dripshared a sound at the beginning. Even preschoolers had aninkling thatplanandprowwere similar in some way. This was true even thoughthe children’s preschools did not offer formal instruction in reading. These find-ings are relevant to the important question of how sensitivity to various phono-logical units relates to literacy (Bowey, 1994; Bowey & Francis, 1991; Kirtley etal., 1989; Morais, Bertelson, Cary, & Alegria, 1986; Morais, Cary, Alegria, &Bertelson, 1979; Read, Zhang, Nie, & Ding, 1986). A key question is whethersensitivity to phonemes is restricted to people who are literate in an alphabetic



writing system or whether it can emerge even in the absence of alphabeticliteracy. Because the children in the present study were not given tests of readingor prereading skills, we cannot determine whether these skills correlate withperformance in the word-pair comparison task. However, the results suggest thata rudimentary sensitivity to single phonemes can begin to emerge before childrenare exposed to formal reading instruction, consistent with Bowey’s (1994) find-ings.The results of Experiment 1 support the linguistic status hypothesis in the case

of onsets. In the following experiments, we turned to the case of syllables. Asdiscussed in the introductory remarks, the superiority for syllables over otherlinguistic units that has been observed in a number of previous studies couldreflect a confound with unit size. That is, syllables are typically longer than thelinguistic units to which they have been compared and the difference in lengthcould account for the greater accessibility of syllables. The next experiments,which used the same logic as Experiment 1, were designed to address this issue.

EXPERIMENT 2

The word-pair comparison task of Experiment 2 included pairs of words thatshared an entire final syllable, such asretreatandentreat,and pairs of words thatshared just part of the final syllable, such asoppressedandundressed.These twotypes of “yes” pairs are referred to asshared syllableandshared part of syllablepairs, respectively. In addition, the stimuli included “no” pairs that did not haveany final phonemes in common. Children were asked to judge whether the wordsin each pair sounded alike at the end. The number of phonemes in the shared unitand the proportion of the phonemes in the word that these shared phonemesrepresented were equal for the shared syllable and shared part of syllable stimuli.We asked whether children performed better when a whole syllable was sharedthan when only part of a syllable was shared. The linguistic status hypothesispredicts such a difference. In contrast, the size hypothesis predicts that perfor-mance on shared syllable pairs will be indistinguishable from performance onshared part of syllable pairs.

Method

Subjects.The subjects were 36 preschoolers (18 boys and 18 girls) with a meanage of 5 years, 0 months (range 4.4–5.10) and 41 kindergartners (21 boys and 20girls) with a mean age of 5 years, 8 months (range 5.0–6.4). Data for a subsetof the kindergartners were presented in Treiman and Zukowski (1991, Experi-ment 3).Stimuli.There were 30 pairs of two-syllable items. All were pronounced with

stress on the second syllable. With two exceptions to be described, all of thestimuli were real words. There were 20 “yes” pairs. The items in 10 of thesepairs, the shared syllable pairs, shared the entire second syllable. For example,retreat and entreat share the syllable /trit/ andrequire and inquire share thesyllable /kwair/. The items in the other 10 “yes” pairs also shared adjacent final



phonemes. Here, however, the shared phonemes did not constitute completesyllables. The shared phonemes were either the word-final rime or the rime plusone consonant of the preceding cluster onset. An example of a shared part ofsyllable pair isattemptand unkempt.These words share the rime /εmpt/. Asanother example,oppressedandundressedshare the unit /rεst/, which is the rimeplus one consonant of the onset of the second syllable.To construct the stimuli for this and the other experiments that were designed

to investigate the status of the syllable, we had to make some decisions abouthow words are divided into syllables. For example, we assumed thatretreathas/trit/ as its second syllable, as doesentreat.The results of Treiman and Danis(1988), Treiman and Zukowski (1990), and Treiman, Gross, and Cwikiel-Glavin(1992) were used as a guide to the syllabification of the stimuli. These experi-ments involved adults; no comprehensive studies of syllabification have yet beencarried out with children.The two types of “yes” pairs in Experiment 2 were similar in the number of

adjacent final phonemes that were shared (3.1 for shared syllable pairs; 3.2 forshared part of syllable pairs). They were also similar in the proportion of thephonemes in the stimuli that these shared phonemes represented (.56 for bothtypes of “yes” pairs). To equate the stimuli in this manner, it was necessary toinclude one pair of nonwords in each set of 10 “yes” pairs. However, becausesome of the real words did not occur in the frequency counts of Carroll et al.(1971), we suspected that the children would be unfamiliar with some of the realword stimuli and that they would not single out the nonwords.In addition to the 20 “yes” pairs, the stimuli included 10 “no” pairs. The words

in these pairs did not share any final phonemes. An example isresortandinvolve.The mean frequencies of the stimuli in the shared syllable, shared part of

syllable, and “no” categories were 43, 44, and 47, respectively (Carroll et al.,1971). The mean lengths of the stimuli were 5.6, 5.8, and 5.8 phonemes. Therewere two “yes” practice pairs and two “no” practice pairs.Procedure.The procedure was like that of Experiment 1 except that the puppet

was said to like words that sounded the same at the end. Also, the experimentermentioned that some of the words might sound “funny.”

Results

Table 2 shows the mean proportion of correct responses for each pair type. Thedata for “yes” pairs were analyzed using the factors of linguistic unit (syllableversus part of syllable) and grade (preschool versus kindergarten). There was asmall numerical superiority, 3%, for shared syllable pairs over shared part ofsyllable pairs. However, the effect of shared unit was significant in neither thesubjects nor the items analysis (F1(1,75)4 .11;F2(1,18)4 1.42, bothp > .24).Nor was there an interaction between linguistic unit and grade (bothp > .41).Among the shared part of syllable pairs, those that shared a rime did not differsignificantly from those that shared a rime plus a preceding phoneme, althoughthe post hoc nature of this comparison and the small number of stimuli involved



means that it must be interpreted with caution. The effect of grade on perfor-mance on “yes” pairs was marginally significant in the subjects analysis(F1(1,75) 4 3.64, p 4 .06) and significant in the items analysis (F2(1,18)4 26.23,p < .001). On “no” pairs, the effect of grade was highly significant(F1(1,75)4 12.73;F2(1,9)4 168.28; bothp < .001). Thus, although overallperformance improved from preschool to kindergarten, there was no reliablesuperiority for pairs that shared a complete syllable over pairs that shared thesame number of phonemes but in which the shared phonemes did not constitutea complete syllable.Both groups of children were able to distinguish between words that shared a

sequence of phonemes at the end and words that did not. They made significantlymore “yes” responses to shared syllable pairs than to “no” pairs and significantlymore “yes” responses to shared part of syllable pairs than to “no” pairs.To summarize, the preschoolers and the kindergartners performed well above

chance in judging whether pairs of stimuli shared groups of phonemes at theends. However, neither group of children did significantly better when the sharedphonemes constituted a whole syllable than when the shared phonemes consti-tuted only part of a syllable.

Discussion

The results of many previous studies suggest that syllables are particularlyaccessible units for young children (Fox & Routh, 1975; Hardy et al., 1973;Leong & Haines, 1978; Liberman et al., 1974; Morais et al., 1984; Treiman &Baron, 1981; Treiman & Zukowski, 1991; but see Walley et al., 1986). Based onthe results of these studies, the reasons for the superiority of syllables are unclear.The observed differences may reflect the special linguistic status of syllables.Alternatively, the observed differences may occur, wholly or in part, becausesyllables are usually larger than the other linguistic units (i.e., phonemes, onsets,rimes) to which they have been compared. To address this question, we equatedthe shared syllable and shared part of syllable pairs in Experiment 2 for thenumber of phonemes that they contained. That is, we broke the link betweenlinguistic level and unit size that exists in natural language by designing pairs ofwords in which the shared syllables did not contain more phonemes than the



“Yes” pairs

Syllable shared Part of syllable shared “No” pairs

Grade retreat-entreat oppressed-undressed resort-involve




shared parts of syllables. In this situation, children were not significantly betterat detecting shared syllables than at detecting other shared groups of phonemes,a similar result to that found by Walley et al. (1986).One possible conclusion from this result is that, contrary to many previous

claims, syllables are not especially accessible linguistic units for children. In thisview, previous reports of a superiority for syllables over other linguistic unitsreflect a confound between linguistic level and unit size. The syllables werelonger than the nonsyllabic units, accounting for the children’s better perfor-mance on syllables. In the present experiment, in which the syllables and thenonsyllabic units contained the same number of phonemes, the children did notperform significantly better on syllables.However, it may be premature to accept the conclusion that syllables have no

special status. There was a small numerical superiority for syllables over parts ofsyllables in the present experiment, although it was not statistically significant. Itis conceivable that the use of real word stimuli could have added noise to the dataif children considered the meanings of the words, to the extent that they knewthem, in making their judgments. In addition, it is possible that children syllabifysome words differently than adults. To alleviate these concerns and to make thestimuli more uniform in their phonological structure, we carried out anotherexperiment using only nonword stimuli. The stimuli for Experiment 3 sharedeither an entire final syllable or a final rime. None of the shared part of syllablestimuli shared a rime plus the second consonant of a preceding cluster onset, aswas the case for some of the stimuli in Experiment 2.

EXPERIMENT 3

Method

Subjects.There were 27 preschoolers (15 male and 12 female) with a mean ageof 4 years, 10 months (range 4.4–5.4) and 27 kindergartners (11 male and 16female) with a mean age of 5 years, 10 months (range 5.1–6.3).Stimuli. There were 30 pairs of bisyllabic nonwords, all with stress on the

second syllable. All of the stimuli contained six phonemes and included onegroup of two adjacent consonants. Twenty of the pairs were “yes” pairs. In 10 ofthe “yes” pairs—theshared syllable pairs—the nonwords shared their entirefinal syllables. In the other 10 “yes” pairs—theshared rime pairs—the nonwordsshared only the rimes of their final syllables. The nonwords in both types of “yes”pairs shared three phonemes, constituting half of the phonemes in the stimuli. Anexample of a shared syllable pair is /f p9kir/-/n{t9kir/; an example of a sharedrime pair is /to9b mp/-/f{9s mp/. The items in the 10 “no” pairs did not shareany phonemes. Examples are /wo9r sk/-/tʃ9lend/ and /for9gʃ/-/d n9lip/. Therewere two practice “yes” pairs, one of each type, and two practice “no” pairs.Procedure.The procedure differed from that of Experiment 1 in several ways.

The puppet was said to like “words” that “sounded the same at the end.” Theexperimenter said that all of the “words” were made up. The experimenterpronounced each nonword twice before having the child repeat it.



Results

Table 3 shows the mean proportion of correct responses for each type of pair.Both the preschoolers and the kindergartners did better on “yes” pairs that shareda syllable than “yes” pairs that shared a rime. Pooling over the two grade levels,there was a 7% superiority for shared syllables. Statistical analyses confirmed amain effect of linguistic unit (F1(1,52) 4 5.51, p 4 .023; F2(1,18)4 8.04,p 4 .011). There was also a main effect of grade (F1(1,52)4 9.50,p4 .003;F2(1,18)4 60.77,p < .001), which occurred because kindergartners didbetter than preschoolers on “yes” pairs. The factors of linguistic type and gradedid not interact (bothp > .66), indicating that the superiority for shared syllablesover shared rimes was similar in magnitude at the two grade levels. On “no”pairs, the effect of grade was not significant (bothp > .22). Finally, both thepreschoolers and the kindergartners differentiated between each type of “yes”item and the “no” items to a significant degree.

Discussion

Experiment 3, like Experiment 2, was designed to test the linguistic statushypothesis in the case of syllables. Specifically, we asked whether children aremore sensitive to shared syllables than to shared nonsyllabic units at the ends ofstimuli. In Experiment 2, which used mostly real word stimuli and a mix ofnonsyllabic units (rimes and rimes plus the last consonants of preceding clusteronsets), the 3% superiority for syllables over nonsyllabic units was not statisti-cally significant. In Experiment 3, which used nonword stimuli and uniformnonsyllabic units (rimes), the superiority for syllables over nonsyllabic units wassmall, 7%, but statistically reliable.The results of Experiments 2 and 3 are not conclusive as to whether there is

a true superiority for syllables over lower-level linguistic units in the secondsyllables of bisyllabic stimuli. One could argue that Experiment 3 was moresensitive than Experiment 2 because the phonological structure of the stimuli wasmore uniform and because the use of nonwords decreased the possible influenceof irrelevant semantic factors on performance. Even if one dismisses the non-



“Yes” pairs

Syllable shared Rime shared “No” pairs

Grade /f p9kir/-/næt9kir/ /to9b mp/-/fæ9s mp/ /wo9r sk/-/t∫9lend/




significant results of Experiment 2 in this way, any superiority for syllables overparts of syllables in the final positions of bisyllabic stimuli appears to be small.Read (1991) suggested that children treat the task of judging whether two

stimuli sound the same at the end as that of judging whether the stimuli rhyme.All of the “yes” pairs in the practice and test phases of Experiments 2 and 3rhymed. This was true whether the stimuli shared a syllable, as inretreat andentreat,or only part of a syllable, as inoppressedandundressed.For bisyllabicstimuli with final stress such as these, the word-final rime is the only linguisticunit that is relevant for rhyme. If children interpret the present task as a rhymingtask—a reasonable suggestion given the familiarity of rhymes for children of thisage—they should ignore any shared units beyond the rime. Thus, the superiorityfor syllables over nonsyllabic units may have been marginal in Experiments 2and 3 because the shared syllables and nonsyllabic units were both at the ends ofthe words.In light of this interpretation, a better test of the linguistic status hypothesis in

the case of syllables would involve stimuli in which the shared units were not atthe ends of words. In this situation, rhyme would not be a factor and a superiorityfor syllables over nonsyllabic units might emerge more clearly than in Experi-ments 2 and 3. In Experiment 4, therefore, the shared unit was in the middle ofa trisyllabic stimulus instead of at the end. For example, the nonwords in theshared syllable pair /və9g{nli/-/su9g{nmo/ share a syllable, /g{n/. The non-words in the shared part of syllable pair /mo9vɑrnli/-/du9zɑrnbə/ share a rime,/ɑrn/. We asked whether children performed better when an entire syllable wasshared than when just a rime was shared. As in Experiment 3, we used nonwordsrather than real words to control the phonological forms of the stimuli and toavoid any influence from word meanings. Because the stimuli for Experiment 4were longer than the stimuli of the earlier experiments, we expected that childrenwould have more difficulty remembering them, repeating them, and makingjudgments about their phonological similarity. Thus, kindergartners and firstgraders served as subjects in contrast to the preschoolers and kindergartners ofthe earlier experiments.

EXPERIMENT 4

Method

Subjects.There were 20 kindergartners (8 males and 12 females) with a meanage of 5 years, 8 months (range 5.2–6.4) and 16 first graders (10 males and 6females) with a mean age of 6 years, 10 months (range 6.1–7.7).Stimuli. There were 30 pairs of trisyllabic nonwords, all with stress on the

second syllable. There were 20 “yes” pairs. In 10 of these—the shared syllablepairs—the items shared their middle syllables. In the other 10 “yes” pairs—theshared rime pairs—the items shared the rimes but not the onsets of the middlesyllables. The pair /və9g{nli/-/su9g{nmo/ is a shared syllable pair and the pair/mo9vɑrnli/-/du9zɑrnbə/ is a shared rime pair. The shared syllable and shared



rime pairs were matched in number of shared phonemes (2.6) and proportion ofphonemes in the stimulus that the shared phonemes represented (.37). They alsohad approximately the same number of phonemes preceding and following theshared phonemes. The items in the 10 “no” pairs did not share their middlephonemes. An example of a “no” pair is /to9f{sri/-/nə9dZmlεv/. The meannumber of phonemes for the stimuli in each of the two types of “yes” pairs andthe “no” pairs was 6.95. There were two practice “yes” pairs, one that shared asyllable and one that shared a rime, and two practice “no” pairs.Procedure.The procedure was like that of Experiment 3, except that the

puppet was said to like made-up words that “sounded the same in the middle.”

Results

Table 4 shows the mean proportion of correct responses for each type of pair.At both grade levels, the children did much better on the shared syllable “yes”pairs than the shared rime “yes” pairs. Pooling over the two grade levels, thesuperiority for shared syllables over shared rimes was 25%. Statistical analysesconfirmed the main effect of linguistic unit (F1(1,34) 4 33.36, F2(1,18)4 113.13, bothp < .001.) There was also a significant effect of grade (F1(1,34)4 4.68,p 4 .04, F2(1,18)4 39.09,p < .001), which arose because the firstgraders performed better than the kindergartners on the “yes” pairs. The itemsanalysis additionally showed an interaction between linguistic type and grade(F2(1,18)4 6.44,p4 .02). The difference between shared syllables and sharedrimes appeared to be greater for kindergartners (31%) than for first graders(18%), who were close to ceiling on syllables. However, the interaction betweenlinguistic type and grade was not significant by subjects (F1(1,34)4 2.72,p4 .11).Analyses of performance on “no” pairs showed a significant effect of grade

level by items (F2(1,9)4 17.25,p 4 .002) that did not reach significance bysubjects (F1(1,34)4 1.22,p 4 .08). Additionally, both the kindergartners andthe first graders made significantly more “yes” responses to pairs that shared aunit in the middle than to pairs that did not.



“Yes” pairs


Grade /və9ænli/-/su9gænmo/ /mo9vɑrnli/-/du9ɑrnbə/ /to9fæsri/-/nə9dZmlεv/

Kindergarten .82 (.29) .51 (.35) .78 (.33)First grade .92 (.12) .74 (.22) .88 (.18)



Discussion

The results of Experiment 4 suggest that, when rhyme is not a factor, childrenfind it easier to compare whole syllables than to compare rimes. The superiorityfor full syllables over rimes was large and statistically significant. It appeared tobe especially large for the kindergartners, the same age group that showed smallor nonsignificant effects in Experiments 2 and 3. The superiority for syllablesthat was observed in this study does not seem to be due to the greater size of thesyllables as compared to the rimes, for the two types of units contained the samenumber of phonemes in the stimuli for this study. The results thus support thelinguistic status hypothesis. They suggest that there is something special aboutsyllables such that two stimuli that share a complete syllable are especiallysimilar for young children.However, there may be a potential problem with this interpretation. The “yes”

pairs that shared a rime contained more and longer sequences of adjacent con-sonants than the “yes” pairs that shared a syllable. It may have been hard forchildren to abstract the common unit from a shared rime pair such as /mo9vɑrnli/-/du9zɑrnbə/ because of the pileup of consonants in the middles of the stimuli,not because of the nature of the shared unit itself. A shared syllable pair such as/və9g{nli/-/su9g{nmo/ may have been easier because the consonant sequencesincluded two rather than three phonemes. If this explanation is correct, childrenshould have performed worse on those “yes” pairs that contained more clusteredconsonants. For kindergartners, performance declined as the average number ofadjacent consonants in the stimuli of a pair increased (r 4 −.48,p4 .031). Thecorrelation was not significant for first graders (r 4 −.27, p4 .24), although itwas in the predicted direction. Thus, at least part of the difference between sharedsyllable and shared rime pairs in Experiment 4 may have reflected the longerconsonant sequences in the shared rime pairs. To determine whether a superiorityfor shared syllable pairs over shared rime pairs would still emerge when the twotypes of pairs were equated for the number of adjacent consonants, an additionalexperiment was performed.

EXPERIMENT 5

Method

Subjects.The subjects were 20 kindergartners (7 boys and 13 girls) with amean age of 5 years, 9 months (range 5.4–6.8) and 20 first graders (11 boys and9 girls) with a mean age of 6 years, 8 months (range 6.4–7.6).Stimuli.There were 30 pairs of trisyllabic nonwords, all with second syllable

stress. Twenty of these were “yes” pairs, 10 shared syllable and 10 shared rime.The shared syllable and shared rime pairs were matched in number of sharedphonemes (2.5) and proportion of phonemes that the shared phonemes repre-sented (.33). An example of a shared syllable pair is /spi9vukə/-/te9vugro/; theseitems share the syllable /vu/. An example of a shared rime pair is /de9kofnot/-/si9pofwəg/; these items share the rime /of/. The items in the 10 “no” pairs did



not share their middle phonemes. An example is /ro9vεngul/-/mə9sepwɑt/. Themean number of phonemes in the stimuli in each category was 7.6. Importantly,the stimuli in the two types of “yes” pairs and the “no” pairs were equated for thenumber of adjacent consonants. There was an average of 2.4 consonants inconsonant sequences for each of the three types of stimuli. There were twopractice “yes” pairs, one that shared a syllable and one that shared a rime, andtwo practice “no” pairs.Procedure.The procedure was identical to that of Experiment 4.

Results

Table 5 shows the mean proportion of correct responses for each pair type.Children at both grade levels did better on “yes” pairs that shared a syllable than“yes” pairs that shared a rime. Pooling over the two grade levels, childrenperformed 15% better on the shared syllable pairs than the shared rime pairs.Statistical analyses of the results for “yes” pairs confirmed that there was a maineffect of linguistic unit (F1(1,38)4 21.43,F2(1,18)4 15.01, bothp < .001).Unit type and grade did not interact (bothp > .75), indicating that the superiorityfor shared syllable pairs over shared rime pairs was similar at the two gradelevels. The main effect of grade was significant in the items analysis (F2(1,18)4 9.28, p 4 .007) but was not significant in the subjects analysis (F1(1,38)4 2.02,p 4 .17). On “no” pairs, the effect of grade just missed significance byitems (F2(1,9) 4 4.31, p 4 .07) and was not reliable by subjects (F1(1,38)4 .28,p4 .61). Finally, children did significantly better on both types of “yes”pairs than on “no” pairs. This was true at both the kindergarten and first gradelevels.

Discussion

As in Experiment 4, children were significantly better at judging that twotrisyllabic stimuli sounded the same in the middle when the shared unit was acomplete syllable than when the shared unit was a rime. The difference betweenshared syllable and shared rime pairs in the present study could not have reflecteda difference between the two types of pairs in the number of adjacent consonantsbecause the stimuli were matched on this variable. The results of Experiment 5,



“Yes” pairs


Grade /spi9vukə/-/te9vugro/ /de9kofnot/-/si9pofwəg/ /ro9vεngul/-/mə9sepwɑt/

Kindergarten .52 (.25) .38 (.27) .78 (.30)First grade .63 (.25) .47 (.26) .82 (.24)



together with those of Experiment 4, show a sizable superiority for shared syl-lables over shared rimes in the middle syllables of trisyllabic stimuli, whererhyme is not a factor. The findings support the linguistic status hypothesis bysuggesting that there is something special about syllables as compared to rimes.Although the results of Experiments 4 and 5 are similar in key respects, some

differences merit comment. The size of the difference between shared syllablepairs and shared part of syllable pairs appeared to be larger in Experiment 4,25%, than in Experiment 5, 15%. Perhaps the lack of matching for number ofadjacent consonants in Experiment 4 helps to explain why the difference betweenthe two types of “yes” pairs was larger there. Another difference is that theoverall level of performance on positive items was lower in Experiment 5 thanin Experiment 4. The reasons for this difference are not clear. However, becausethe children in the two studies attended different schools and were tested bydifferent experimenters, it is difficult to compare overall levels of performanceacross the two experiments.

GENERAL DISCUSSION

Phonological awareness is not a single homogenous ability. It has been arguedthat one source of the heterogeneity observed among phonological awarenesstasks relates to the linguistic level of the units involved. Awareness of syllablesmay develop earlier than awareness of intrasyllabic units, which in turn maydevelop earlier than awareness of single phonemes. However, much of the re-search that has been put forward to support the linguistic status hypothesis ispotentially flawed. This is because the linguistic level of a unit has often beenconfounded with its size. The present research was carried out in an attempt todisentangle linguistic status and unit size and so to provide a better test of thelinguistic status hypothesis.The results of Experiment 1 support the linguistic status hypothesis in the case

of cluster onsets versus the single consonants that make up these onsets. Wefound that children could more easily judge that two words shared an initialsound when the shared sound was an onset on its own, as inpactsandpeel,thanwhen the shared sound was part of a cluster onset, as inplan andprow. Thesefindings concur with other results suggesting there is a true superiority for onsetsover the phonemes that make them up, a superiority that cannot be reduced todifferences in size (Barton et al., 1980; Bruck & Treiman, 1990; Caravolas &Bruck, 1993; Schreuder & van Bon, 1989; Treiman, 1985; Treiman & Weath-erston, 1992).In Experiments 2 through 5, we used the same technique to examine the status

of syllables. Although many studies have shown that children perform relativelywell on phonological awareness tasks involving syllables from an early age (Fox& Routh, 1975; Hardy et al., 1973; Leong & Haines, 1978; Liberman et al., 1974;Morais et al., 1984; Treiman & Baron, 1981; Treiman & Zukowski, 1991; but seeWalley et al., 1986), linguistic status has often been confounded with unit size.



The superiority of syllables may stem not from their linguistic status but from thefact that they are longer than the units to which they have been compared.Experiments 2 through 5 were designed to separate the variables of linguisticstatus and unit size by asking whether children more easily detect the similaritybetween pairs of stimuli that share a complete syllable than between pairs ofstimuli that share the same number of phonemes but in which the shared pho-nemes do not constitute a full syllable. When the shared unit was at the ends ofthe stimuli, the superiority for shared syllables over nonsyllabic units was non-significant (Experiment 2) or small but significant (Experiment 3). As suggestedby Read (1991), children may treat the task of judging whether two words soundsimilar at the end as a rhyming task. If so, the effect of similarity beyond theword-final rime (the unit relevant for rhyme with final-stressed stimuli of thekind used here) would be largely masked. When the shared unit is in the middlesyllable of the stimuli, rhyme is no longer a factor. In this case (Experiments 4and 5), the superiority for shared syllables over shared rimes was sizeable andsignificant.Discounting the confounding effect of rhyming, the present results support the

linguistic status hypothesis in the case of syllables. They suggest that the pho-nological similarity between a pair of words or nonwords is more salient forchildren when the stimuli share an entire syllable than when they share only partof a syllable. This conclusion is different from that reached by Walley et al.(1986). However, as Walley et al. acknowledged, the sample sizes in their studywere relatively small. A numerical superiority for syllables over nonsyllabic unitswas observed for kindergartners, although it was not significant. The conclusionthat phonological similarity is more salient when it is based on shared syllablesthan when it is based on parts of syllables agrees with conclusions drawn fromstudies of adults. In two experiments by Bruck, Treiman, and Caravolas (1995),college students were quicker to detect the similarity between pairs of spokennonwords when the nonwords shared a syllable at the beginning or in the middlethan when the nonwords shared only part of a syllable. Results were mixed whenthe shared unit was at the end of the nonwords. This latter result, like those of thepresent Experiments 2 and 3, may reflect a confounding effect of rhyme. Furtherevidence that syllables have a special status for adults comes from a primingexperiment by Corina (1992). In a lexical decision task with spoken stimuli,pamperprimedpamphletbut blizzarddid not primeblister.This difference wasattributed to the fact thatpamperandpamphletshare their first syllable (/p{m/),whereasblizzardandblister,which share their first three phonemes (/bl/), do nothave a full syllable in common.The present results suggest that, although the size of the shared unit is one

important determinant of performance in phonological tasks (Brady et al., 1994;Walley et al., 1986), it is not the only factor. The linguistic status of the unit alsomatters. It appears that syllables are more accessible than rimes and that onsetsare more accessible than single consonants. If we view the word or syllable as



having a hierarchical internal structure (e.g., Fudge, 1969; Selkirk, 1983), thepresent results suggest that higher levels are more accessible to children thanlower levels.Our results support the idea that phonological awareness is a heterogeneous

ability rather than a single homogenous skill. The heterogeneity of phonologicalawareness has implications for the relationship between phonological awarenessand alphabetic literacy. As we mentioned earlier, there has been a debate overwhether phonological awareness is a precursor to literacy, a by-product of lit-eracy, or both. The answer to this question may depend on the linguistic levelunder consideration. Our data, together with data from illiterate adults and read-ers of non-alphabetic scripts (Morais et al., 1979, 1986; Read et al., 1986),suggest that sensitivity to syllables, onsets, and rimes can develop withoutknowledge of a writing system that represents speech at these levels. In contrast,phonemic sensitivity may result at least in part from experiences connected withthe learning of an alphabetic writing system. Although formal reading instructionmay not be necessary for the emergence of phonemic sensitivity, as suggested bythe above-chance performance of the preschoolers on the shared phoneme pairsof Experiment 1, informal learning about letters and their sounds may be im-portant (Bowey, 1994).

APPENDIX

Stimuli for Experiment 1

“Yes” pairs Examples: troop-toys, porch-plankOnset shared Part of onset sharedTest: pacts-peel Test: plan-prow

born-bump bran-bluefame-fort fry-fleedeed-darn droop-dwellcork-cot clam-crykilled-kite crab-cleansack-sort smell-swaysends-sock spy-stewsafe-served snack-slopthick-thorn thwart-thrill

“No” pairs Examples: sift-bland, gull-frostTest: bomb-drip blade-tones

fern-spill gloom-packedspurt-binge dial-tweedthreat-plea slope-freepaint-sew dive-sand




“Yes” pairsSyllable shared Part of syllable sharedExample: repair-compare Example: awake-mistakeTest: retreat-entreat Test: oppressed-undressed

require-inquire depraved-engraveddeplore-implore regroove-improvedebuted-imbued amused-confuseddeploy-employ acclaim-inflamerepeat-compete attempt-unkemptreceive-conceive inane-obtainparole-enroll aboard-ignoredprefer-confer abort-escort/sklu9pe/-/tr{nz9pe/ /ə9bold/-/n9dZold/

“No” pairs Examples: before-estate, about-impressTest: resort-involve delay-inject

elect-disband advance-occultapiece-quartet apply-contractabsolve-concrete impasse-encroachedbamboo-disgrace imply-address


“Yes” pairs Syllable shared Part of syllable sharedExample: /g{f9kεb/-/rip9kεb/ Example: /mo9s lv/-/rε9d lv/Test: /f p9kir/-/n{t9kir/ Test: /to9b mp/-/f{9s mp/

/bm9ked/-/r{f9ked/ /s9m{nd/-/ko9r{nd//fεt9bus/-/d{g9bus/ /p{9raind/-/so9baind//nεg9ten/-/hɑr9ten/ /dZai9l sk/-/fεb sk//m{f9pin/-/gor9pin/ /tʃ{9muzd/-/go9fuzd//m{g9nεp/-/bor9nεp/ /su9born/-/tʃ{9forn//m s9fεt/-/r{d9fεt/ /bo9lεnt/-/k{9mεnt//lɔk9zif/-/s{d9zif/ /rɑ9s{ft/-/gu9m{ft//m{k9tun/-/lor9tun/ /k{9bεsk/-/su9lεsk//ʃ{m9pit/-/sor9pit/ /so9dZɑrk/-/m9tɑrk/

“No” pairs Examples: /bɑn9lutʃ/-/sεg9m{f/, /du9rɑnd/-/t9fεltʃ/Test: /wo9r sk/-/tʃ9lend/ /n{9raild/-/bu9dZsk/

/fi 9ruvd/-/to9g lk/ /for9gʃ/-/d n9lip//d n9les/-/v{m9bɑg/ /b{l9saik/-/kor9n f//bs9vɔl/-/k n9fut/ /bo9m sk/-/l{9rεnt//t9lont/-/be9mεsk/ /fεn9lip/-/tis9vor/




“Yes” pairs Syllable shared Rime sharedExample: /məv9εlri/-/kai9vεlhu/ Example: /i9dorsgu/-/ə9porsfai/Test: /və9g{nli/-/su9g{nmo/ Test: /mo9vɑrnli/-/du9zɑrnbə/

/spi9vukə/-/te9vugo/ /e9gεlpvu/-/ni9fεlpkə//də9gsro/-/bli9gsfɑ/ /ə9sεldvɑ/-/u9dZεldni//nə9kεvmir/-/vo9kεvlɔ/ /ge9skni/-/ə9pkfu//si9bεnflu/-/mə9bεngɑr/ /e9kɑfno/-/i9pɑfwə//vi9tɑlre/-/spu9tɑlwɔ/ /mo9k{stli/-/u9b{stnə//go9z{mlεt/-/vi9z{mrə/ /i9tndlo/-/ve9bndmə//də9fuge/-/li9fuwɔ/ /ke9b{mpvə/-/o9ʃ{mpni//do9seku/-/mə9se-ip/ /ə9g{tlɔ/-/u9v{tme//kru9vo-i/-/le9vowə/ /ə9dZosri/-/e9tosgu/

“No” pairs Examples: /l9ədosir/-/o9kldni/, /vɔ9segu/-/tai9v{mru/Test: /to9f{sri/-/nə9dZmlεv/ /drai9nokə/-/fe9zigɔ/

/mo9saivi/-/de9tupə/ /və9bεgtru/-/dai9w{pkɑz//re9hudZɔ/-/mə9fog{p/ /də9sεlpmi/-/e9vorngai//ə9vknu/-/i9ʃ{sgɔ/ /e9dorfmə/-/nu9p{stli//ə9sɑrdbi/-/e9t{mpno/ /fə9d{sri/-/e9kεlpno/


“Yes” pairs Syllable shared Rime sharedExample: /mə9vεntri/-

/kai9vεnflu/Example: /mi9dorsgu/-

/nə9porsfai/Test: /və9g{nbli/-/su9g{nfro/ Test: /mo9vorlit/-/du9zorbə/

/spi9vukə/-/te9vugro/ /dai9gεlpvu/-/ni9fεlpkə//də9gsro/-/li9gsfɑ/ /ə9sεktrai/-/mo9lεkni//tʃu9mpkən/-/vi9mpgεs/ /ho9k{stli/-/u9b{stnə//gə9kεvblin/-/mɑ9kεvtrɔ/ /de9kɑfnot/-/si9pɑfw g//si9bεnflu/-/mə9bεngrɑt/ /bə9sεldvɑ/-/u9dZεldnif//go9zekεft/-/vi 9zeprə/ /ke9b{lən/-/go9ʃ{lmi//pə9fugre/-/ni9fublɑ/ /mo9k{ntlə/-/be9f{ntgu//swo9lgai/-/de9lbri/ /və9dZosri/-/me9toshu//mu9potəs/-/vɑ9pokεf/ /so9g{ntlɔ/-/bu9v{ntme/

“No” pairs Examples: /gu9dobli/-/wɔ9p{vstai/, /wo9hɑrpgi/-/m{9vŋksu/Test: /go9k{vtri/-/nə9dZmlεp/ /tʃu9gonliv/-/bəferwɑp/

/mu9ŋkvən/-/se9εltho/ /ro9vεldgə/-/ku9zmpfi//ro9vεngul/-/mə9sepwɑt/ /e9wndbu/-/mo9p{stli//mo9visεn/-/wu9zɔkr p/ /u9zεlfgɑ/-/me9vutri//u9rogəst/-/lo9tʃikwεf/ /mu9{ndli/-/e9sεtgor/



Key to Phonetic Notation

/ɑ/ as in hot, // bit, /ε/ bet, /{/ bat, /ɔ/ bought, / / but, /i/ beet, /e/ bait, /u/ boot,/o/ boat, /ai/ bite, /oi/ boy, /2/ Bert, /ə/ sofa, /ʃ/ shut, /ŋ/ song, /dZ/ jet, /tʃ/ chick;9 indicates that the following syllable has primary stress.

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RECEIVED: April 5, 1994;REVISED: August 3, 1994.


children's sensitivity to syllables, onsets, rimes, and phonemes

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