Spelling of stop consonants after /s/ by children and adults

Abstract Two experiments examined the way in which kindergarteners, first graders, and adults spell syllables like /spa/, /sta/, and /ska/. The second consonants of these syllables are standardly spelled as the voiceless stops P, T, and C/K. From a phonetic standpoint, however, the consonants could be spelled as the voiced stops B, D, and G. The proportion of voiced spellings was found to decrease with reading level: The nonstandard spellings were fairly prevalent among children, but almost nonexistent among adults. Nonetheless, most adults could choose the phonetically plausible voiced spellings over phonetically incorrect spellings.

[1]  R. Treiman.  Phonemic awareness and spelling: children's judgments do not always agree with adults. , 1985, Journal of experimental child psychology.

[2]  P. A. Weaver,et al.  Theory and practice of early reading , 1979 .

[3]  D. Klatt.  Voice onset time, frication, and aspiration in word-initial consonant clusters. , 1975, Journal of speech and hearing research.

[4]  Phonological distinctive features as cues in learning. , 1968, Journal of experimental psychology.

[5]  H W Catts,et al.  Simplification of /s/ + stop consonant clusters: a developmental perspective. , 1984, Journal of speech and hearing research.

[6]  A. Healy,et al.  Accessibility of the voicing distinction for learning phonological rules , 1980, Memory & cognition.

[7]  J. Sawusch,et al.  Adaptation and contrast in the perception of voicing. , 1981, Journal of experimental psychology. Human perception and performance.

[8]  Orthography and the Perception of Stops After S , 1974, Language and speech.

[9]  O. J. Dunn.  Multiple Comparisons Using Rank Sums , 1964 .

[10]  R. N. Ohde,et al.  Fundamental frequency as an acoustic correlate of stop consonant voicing. , 1984, The Journal of the Acoustical Society of America.

[11]  Joseph Paul Stemberger,et al.  Speech errors and theoretical phonology : a review , 1983 .

[12]  B Byrne,et al.  On teaching articulatory phonetics via an orthography , 1984, Memory & cognition.

[13]  John Laver,et al.  The Cognitive Representation of Speech , 1982 .

[14]  C. Baltaxe,et al.  Principles of phonology , 1969 .

[15]  J. Downing,et al.  Language awareness and learning to read , 1984 .

[16]  L. Gerstman,et al.  The Perception of English Stops by Speakers of English, Spanish. Hungarian, and Thai: A Tape-Cutting Experiment , 1960 .

[17]  J. Reeds,et al.  The Perception of Stops after s , 1961 .