Reading different writing systems:The grapholinguistic equilibrium

hypothesis

Mark S. SeidenbergUniversity of Wisconsin-Madison

Golden era for reading research!

One of the big success stories in cognitive science/neuroscience

(links to education: not so good, at least in US)

Not just English; many writing systems, languages

Lots of progress!

My own work

Children, adultsNormal, dyslexicEnglish, Serbian, Chinese,other writing systems

Brain circuits BehaviorComputational modelsConnectionist models that simulate detailed aspects of acquisition, skilled performance. Dyslexia = anomalies in how system develops

Research at UW, MedicalCollege of Wisconsin, Haskins Labs (CT)

For today’s talk, I tried to pick a topic that is of interest to this audience

Writing Systems and Reading

• Do properties of writing systems affect – Skilled reading– Learning to read– Brain circuits that support reading– Dyslexia

We have this framework….

1. Mappings between codes are statistical, not categorical

2. Ouput determined by multiple constraints 3. Division of labor among components varies

between writing systemsbetween individuals

meaning

spelling sound

context

Other models?

There are some.Not the time or place to do comparisons.But, DRC

Doesn’t Read CorrectlyAnd CDP+

Can’d Do Pronunciation, and other stuff

Post-hoc fitting of models to data.Only allows models to fit individual studies of a phenomenon, sort of.“incremental, nested”? No, not actually.

But that’s a different talk

Impact of writing systems: an area where dual-route models

have little to say

• Fitting models to writing systems/languages

• Each gets a different model, different parameters

• Similarities/differences built in: have to know them already

• No learning• No semantics• No “why”

But that’s a different talk

It’s a golden era for reading research but it’s taken a while for cross-linguistic issues to come into focus

Most research: it’s about the properties of writing systemsOrthographic depth

I don’t think this is quite right. It’s about writing systems and the languages they represent

There are tradeoffs between writing systems and languages

There is Grapholinguistic Equilibrium

Confidential:

I don’t actually know how every writing system in the world works.For example, I don’t know

český jazyk

Grapholinguistic Equilibrium is a hypothesis.

Most of the evidence is circumstantial.

Not much direct experimental evidence.

Let’s do an experiment here! Now!

When you hear

Ask: is it true of český jazyk?

If it is, great.

If it isn’t, I’ll go

this

orthography phonology

semantics

Writing affords routes to meaning!

ALL writing

So:

Whether your word is

PICTURE

or

or

obrázek

An early division of labor theory:

Orthographic Depth

orthography phonology

semantics

Orthographic depth hypothesis:shallow: more orth-phon-semdeep: more orth-semEnglish: both

1980sKatz, Turvey,Haskins Labs

Among alphabetic writing systems, English is unusual

many inconsistenciesunlike Finnish, Italian, Russian, Korean,

others

orth-->phon is a big issue for English learnersnot for everyone else

Czech

We don’t want theories of reading to be based on the outlier data!

It’s true that written English differs from shallower alphabetic systems

Assumptions derived from English may not be valid.Findings differ in important respects.

But, there are no “outlier” orthographies. Just:Different tradeoffs between writing systems and languages

Is English an outlier?

For example, Learning to read: are shallow orthographies easier?

Case study: Welsh vs. English

• Welsh: shallow English: deep• Different schools, same communities• Natural controls for SES etc.

(These are older studies, Marketa.)

Ellis & Hooper, 2001: Welsh-reading 7 year olds correctly name twice as many words as English readers

Spencer & Hanley, 2003: 6 year olds

Out of 30 items/condition

Similar findings in other languages

ItalianSpanishGermanFrenchFinnishSerbianTurkishAlbanianothers

Handbook of Orthography and Literacy,Joshi & Aron (Eds.), Erlbaum 2006

Seymour et al. (2003)Ziegler et al. (2010)

Czech?

Issue: These studies equate “reading” with “reading aloud”

Question:What is the relationship between reading aloud and comprehension?

Not tested or not tested in detail.

The word “comprehension” does not occur in this article.

Why not?

1. Many studies of English show that learning orth-phon is hardReading aloud is related to comprehension skill

2. Therefore, writing systems that make it easier to learn orth-phon should be easier to learn to read = comprehend

Case where thinking was too tied to studies of English.

But Reading Aloud ≠ Reading

I shall demonstrate…

1. Dissociations of reading aloud and comprehension

Good reading aloudZero comprehension

Bar Mitzvah Languages

• Must be able to read Hebrew aloud• Do not have to comprehend• Can be done if the writing system is shallow• Which vowelled Hebrew is.

Welsh: also a very good Bar Mitzvah language!

For the Bar/Bat Mitzvah, the boy/girl

Do Shallow Orthographies Promote Better Comprehension?

Not in the Welsh-English studiesEllis and Hooper

Pronunciation Welsh > EnglishComprehension English > Welsh*

Hanley et al.Comprehension English > WelshCorrelation between pronunciation, comprehension: English highly significant Welsh n.s.

“This result suggests that a transparent orthography does not confer any advantages as far as reading comprehension is concerned. As comprehension is clearly the goal of reading this finding is potentially reassuring for teachers of English.”

Hanley et al. 2004

What about other Bar Mitzvah Languages?

Turkish: Aydin Durgunoğlu has looked at both reading aloud and comprehension in detail

“Phonological awareness and decoding develop rapidly in both young and adult readers of Turkish because of the transparent orthography and the special characteristics of phonology and morphology. However, reading comprehension is still a problem.”

Durgunoğlu, 2006

Also true of other shallow orthographies?

Czech?

English speakers all have (or had) words of this sort in our vocabularies.

2. People comprehend words they cannot pronounce correctly

URANUS “URINE-OUS?”

EgregiousPiquantSuaveRapportQuayNon-pareilAutomataChaosCoitus

If we tested my reading aloud, I might perform more poorly than Welsh readers too.

3. How shallow are shallow orthographies?

Writing systems are not transcriptions of speech.

Information relevant to pronunciation is left out.

Creates limit on strictly orth-phon-sem processing.

Example: Serbo-Croatian, the original “shallow” orthography

Grapheme-phoneme correspondences easy, but not sufficientPronunciation requires more

syllabic stress: pitch accent:ZATvori prisons RIBA fish vs. to scrubzatVORi to shut LUK onion vs. arch

PROIZvodi productsproizVODi to produce

A lot like English!CONductconDUCT

Czech?

4. What prevents people from learning orth-->sem?Even in shallow orthographies?

Harm & Seidenberg (2004) division of labor model learned

Orth-phon-semOrth-sem

At the same time.

Maybe people do too.

5. If shallow is so GREAT, what about Hebrew?

It’s shallow all right…

… but they leave out the vowels!

6. And what about the spoken language?

• Writing systems differ• So do the languages they represent

Comprehension depends on both!

Gough, Simple view of reading

Decoding X Spoken language comprehension

Orthographic depth Morphological complexity

DEEPER SHALLOWERMorphologically simple Morphologically complex

English, Chinese Finnish, Serbian, Italian, RussianAlbanian, Welsh, Spanish, etc.

Czech?

Why would this relation hold, in general?

Consider Serbo-Croatian

• They get the spelling-sound correspondences for free

• But the morphology is very complex!

3 genders 2 numbers 7 cases

masc sing nominativefem plural genitiveneuter dative

accusative instrumental locative vocativeCzech

Mirkovic, Seidenberg, Joanisse (Cognitive Science, 2011)

Model of learning Serbian inflectional system

Now: imagine learning to read Serbian if, as in English,many letters had multiple pronunciations

A few consonants like C and GEach vowel represents many sounds

This additional level of complexity would make the system vastly more difficult to learn.

Too hard!

Contrast: Learning to read in English

• NOT: one spelling - one sound– But, irregulars are mostly short, high-frequency

words– And not arbitrary: HAVE is not “glorp”

• The inflectional system is trivial

– Number on nouns, tense and number on verbs– Makes words shorter too

Grapholinguistic Equilibrium

The simple view of writing systems and reading:G = orth opacity x linguistic complexity)

English: high opacity, low complexitySerbian: low opacity, high complexity

Languages/writing systems tend to keep G constant.

Languages get the writing systems they deserve

In other words

(why English spelling reform is pointless)

Even more broadly

Writing systems provide cues about sound and meaning

Late Hieroglyphics

Hememu = “humanity”

Sound cues

+

Meaning cues

(man, woman, many)

meaningsound

Chinese

Semantic cue“radical”

Sound cue“phonetic”

“Mother”

In Hebrew and ArabicK-T-B

In EnglishRedhead

Blockhead

Deadheads

Morphemes = convergence of sound and meaning

In Serbo-Croatian

all related to “advisor”

Lemmas = strong semantic cues

In Czech

Conclusions

• Most comparative research on reading has focused on reading aloud– definitely easier in shallow orthographies

• However, comprehension depends on knowledge of spoken language

• Spoken languages vary in “morphological depth” and other ways

• Tradeoffs between properties of writing systems and languages = grapholinguistic equilibrium

• Writing systems are codes for conveying sound + meaning, universally.

meaning

spelling sound

context

Thanks for listening!

Are Some Writing Systems Easier

to Learn to Read?We won’t know without taking into account properties of spoken language

But it doesn’t look like it.

But, additional assumptions:

• Each code is learned,constrained by other codes;

• Interactivity, not modularity;

• Information encoded by collections of units, etc.

Not specific to reading.

Every theory/model must have these basic elements

What is different about “dual-route” models (e.g., DRC, CDP+):

meaning

spelling sound

context

But, for what?

Also: Models don’t address computation of meaning!

Millions of readers taught by Whole Language Method!

No no no!

In the US there are many people who are poor at pronouncing words and nonwords aloud:

X

orthographyphonology

“Dual-route” models are different!!!

Two routes to phonology

Lexical route

Nonlexical route

Not about computing meaning!

Other talk!

University of Wisconsin-Madison

A birthplace of American psychology(1886)

NRC rankings, 2010

DRC

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