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chapter

andLanguaEe
Literacy Processes-
Effects
andStructural
Orthographic
PrathibhaKaranth
& Hearing
of Speech
All IndiaInstitute
Manasa MYsore,
Gangothri, India

INTRODUCTION

iteraq-has long been consideredto be closelylinked to cognitive

development;in fact, it is considered to be crucial for certain
orp..r. of it. The invendon of writing has been,acc"tl9:9_t::'i.1:
lt rs
of an impormnt agerlr of bodr individual and societaldevelo,pment-
t1'e-basic llatuIe of the thought processes
assumed that liter-ic1'changes
ofanindiv.idualandultimatelythrougirmass]iteracyt-lralofhuman
societies at large. Goody and Watt (1968) suggestthlt-fie invention of
*.ir*g qurt"*J*o. instru'teunl for t1e emel-gence of-history as disrinct
from irytir and the fo'ndi'g of forrnal.logic. Since literary objectifies
manipulation'
suokeni*suug. b-vcreating:nervsymbolic languagesfor
rvith t'rique kinds of logical co.mPetenc'
ii i, rtougtir tJ t
"'associatJd rhe viervpoinr of rhe
u hig-herlevel of conceptualthorrght. Frorn
"nJ of concept forrnation
individual,literary manifesu iself in nerv modes
and in the awarenessof thotrghtirelf (Dash' 1990)'
growth
Two distinct interpretariorrl of rhe role of literaq' in cognitive
and, *re prac:ice
have been put foldr-the developmenurlperspective
perspecLive(scribner & cole, l97B). The developmentalPel'sPectlve
tiai literac,v deveiopsT.llol capacitiesthat have widespread
inie"llecmal consequences. Gieenfield(1972) argues*tat written speech
",rgg'.t*
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146 KAMNTH

is at a higher level of abstraction than oral sPeech,which is a context-

dependent language.Written language requires that meaning be made
dear, independent of the imrnediate and the concrete reference.Writ-
ten language providesthe means for decontextualizedabstractthinking.
Illiterate adults are found to confine their mental operations to the
immediate, concrete,and practical with little reference to absnactand
categoricalassociations (Luria, l97l; Cole et al', 1971).The develop-
mental perspectiveon literacy and cognition therefore Droposesttrat the
effects of literagv are the emergence of absrract thinking and logical
operations ratler than specific skills'
The proponents of the practice Perspective, on the otler hand, distin-
guish benveen the intellecrual effecs of "schooled" and "nonschooled"
literacy. On the basis of empirical evidence on schooled and non-
schooled Vai's in Liberia, they concluded that there is no evidencethat
"reading and writing entail fundamental cognitive resu:ucturingsthat
control intellectual performance in all domains" (Scribner & Cole,
1978). Instead they argued that schooledliteracy may be closelytied to
the performance parametersof a limited setof tasks.
Researchersin traditionai oral socie[ieshavealso questionedthe valid-
iry of the inferenceson the different implications of oral and written
communication for cognitive development,and charge the adherens of
*re developmentalpersPectivewith reinrroducingthe earlier discredited
distinction'benveer"logical" and "prelogical"by "literate" and "nonlit-
et?te" (Srivastava,1990).Instead tiey assertthat there is a need to vierv
the orality and literacydistinction in a much wider pempectiveof com-
municadon theory.
Nevertheless,while the questions of whether the effectsof literary on
cognition are general or lirnited to specificskills and whether these
efficts are ro bi found only in literates of the schooled kind or can be
achieved to rhe same exteit thiotrgh alterlratemeans by nonschooled
litelates, iemains unresolved; it is generallyconceded tl'ratliteracvdoes
contribute to cognitivedevelopment.

METALINGU ISTI C AWARENE SS

ar aspect of the acquisitionof litelacy of tlre schooled varierythat has

attracied increasingittention over the last decadeor so is the language
user's attitudes towards, and manipulations of, langUage itself' This
awareness,temed metalinguistic abilitv, is said to be a "developmentallv
distinct kind of linguistic funcuoiiiiiS Ui:it deveiopssep;iratei)'flom anC
larer than basicspeakingand listening skillJ' (-funmer, 1991,p. lg5).
Menlinguisric peiformairce requires reflecdlrg uPon one or another

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ORTHOCMPHICAND STRUCTUMLEFFECTS 147

aspect of language per se and is defined as "the ability to separate a

word from its referent, dissociatingthe meaning of a sentencefiom its
form and reflecting on the componentelements of spokenwords" (Tun-
mer, 1991,p. 105).A wide varieryof metalinguistic abilitiesare acquired
during mid-childhood and they all involve controlled and processing of
a sort different from t}le more automalic processingcharacteristic of
speech comprehensionand production. Further, the development of
metalinguisticawarenessis said to lead to metacognitiveskills such as
reflecting and monitoring one's thoughts. It is therefore seen as an
important aspectof child development.
Empiricalsnrdies on metalinguisticabilities in children have elicited
this informationthrough experimental tasks invoh'ingphonemic analy'
sis, strucnrralambiguity detection, grammaticalin judgement, synon-
ymy judgement, message consistency judgement, and story
comprehensionand narration tasks. On *re basis of tleir empirical
investigationsmost researchersin this al'ea agree that metalinguistic
abilities are developmental in narure and are acquired gradually
aronnd mid-childhood (Bever, 1970; De Villiers & de Villiels, 1972;
Bohannon, 1976; Gleitman & Gleitman, 1979; 1'rarmiloff-Smith,1979;
Hakes,Evan,& Tunmer, 1980;Scholl & Ryan, 1980;Van Kleek, 1982'
l9B4; Pratt,Tunmer, & Bowey, l9s4). However, causalinterpretations
offered by these researchersdiffer. Three major viewpoins exist: (a)
that menlinguistic alvarenessis incidental to lurgrage acquisition, (b)
that it is a consequenceof decentratiotrof cognitive processes,and (c)
that it is directl-vrelated to the experienceof leaming to read.

Metalinguistic Awareness as a Concomitant

of LanguageAcquisition

psvcholinguists like Clark (1978) and Fiarmiloffsmith (1979), on the

basis of,tneir investigatio4 on langrrage development in young chil-
dren, report that 5 y"l.t s".ttt to be a fi-ontier agelePresentingdev:el-
opmenr with a gradual passagefrorn extralilrgristic to inu-alinguistic
,.f"r.n.r, both in speecli utterancesarrd later in metalinguisticaware-
ness. The development of metalinguistic skills around the age of 8
years is said to palallel a new phase^in langrage developmentwhen
of com-
the child seemsto attain ttre capacir,vfor a more abstractlevel
pr.ehensionand can cope if need be wi*rout the interplay of func-
rionat, Evntactic, se*at ic, and Pragrnatic diic" used in normr'l
discourse.These nerv skills are seen as being svnlPtomaticof an inter-
nal reorganizarionof linguistic categoriesand a nervphasein linguistic
development.

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I4E KARAhVTH

Metalinguistic Awarenessas a Linguistic Manifestation

of the Piagetian Cognitive Developmental ChangesOccurring
at &e Concrete Operational Period

Researcherslike Lundberg (1978); Hakes, Evan,& Tunmer 1980);and

[unmer, Herriman, and Nesdale (1988) havesuggestedthat metalinguis-
tic sliills may be linked to the Piagetian processof decenuation. Metalin-
guisticperformance, thev argue, requires the ability to decenter,to shift
one'sattention fiom messagecontent to the properties of languageused
to convey content. An essential feature of both metalinguistic abilities
and decentration is the ability to control rhe course of one's thought,
that is, to invoke control processing.Accordingto this view, poor meta-
linguistic skills are a reflection of a developmenrallag in decenrarion
processes.It is not suggestedthat high levelsof meralinguistic ability
emergespontaneouslyin development. It is proposed that during rnid-
dle childhood children develop the capacitl'for becoming metalinguisri-
callvaware when confrontedwitli certain kindsof tasks,such as learning
to read. However, it is also postulated that a certain threshold level of
decentrationability mustbe attained by childrenbefore they can acquire
the low-level metalinguisticoperations necessary to acquire basicread-
ing skills.

Metalin guis tic AwarenessCons equent to ReadingAc q uisiti on

which Starts with Schooling in Mid'childhood

A third viewpoint suggeststhat experienceirr reading and wriung ma1'

facilitate the development of "metacommunication,"because written
messages"stay put" and remain accessiblefor critical evaluation(Olson,
1972;Donaldson, 1976).On the basis of his work relating children's
performance in schoolwitir the literacy-relatedactivities that they were
exposedto in their preschoolyears, Wells (1982)argued that schoollit-
emry leads to better metalingrristicskills.Flavell (1985) extendsthis
notion to include experiencesassociaedrvithformal schooling that help
children learn about the natu'e and mallagementof communicative
enterprisesby making frequent and explicit demands to communicate
dearly to others and to monitor &e clu'iry artdcomprehensibiliryof the
communicationsthey receive.
Ehri (1982) proposesa more direct relationshipbehveen lealning to
read and write and the development of metalinguisticskills. Ivletalin-
guisticprocessesaie said to tre facilitated bv fie concrete picrure of lan-
guageprovided by *riting becartselanguagecan be detached from its
cornmunicativefunction, D'eated as an object,and studied for its form
more easily tlu'ough writing, whicl: providesthe fixed visual and spatial

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ORTHOCMPHICAND STRUCTUML EFFECTS 149

qvmbolsthat can be seenand manipulated. Metalinguistic skillsare said

to benefit from print, which makes sPeechvisible. Further, their devel-
opment is said to be aided by familiarity with the tetminology used to
describethe strucrureof language, such asword, sentence,and so on, by
providing children with the scheme for conceptualizingand analyzing
the strucrure of speech.To quote Ehri,

written language supplies a visual-spatial model for speech and when chil-
dren learn to read and spell, rhis model and irs symbols are internalized as
a representational systemin memory. The process of acquiring this system
works various changes on spoken language. Having a risual-spatial model
for speech rnay facilitate performance in various nretaiinguistic tasks
requiring speakers to detach language from its communicative form and
inspect its form. (Ehri, 1982, p. 361)

Empirical Evidence sn il'Istalinguistic Skills in Speakers

(Child and Adutt) of an Agglutinative/Synthetic Language
with a Nonalphabetic ScriPt

Our interest in the metalinguistic skills of children and adultswasinci-

dental to the constructionof a langr.ragetestin which the grammaticaliq'
judgernent task wasusedto elicit a quicli measureof children's syntacric
.o*p"t"t,.". The syntacticsection of the Linguistic Profile Test (LPT;
Xarantfr, 1980, 1984)requires the subjectto judge the grammaticalityof
130 sentencesthat qvstemadcallysample acrossa broad range of setr-
tence su-ucturescoveringthe core syntacticfeanrresof t}le I(annadalan-
gqage-a Draviclianlanguage spoken in Karnataka,Southern India. I1
6ne-of our very first snrdiesusing this test (Karantir, l9Ba) a group of
children ranging in age from 2 to l4 yearswere sntdied. Of thesechil-
dren, those Uetowttre age of 5 to 6 yean seemedunable to respond to
the grammadcalitvjudgernent task and -either acceptedor rejectedall
givei sentenceswiJroui reflecting on their gramrnatlcal acceptabiliq'.
Lound 70 months of age, children were seen to begin attemPtingthe
nsk and performing at the chance level. By around 150 months of age,
about 80% proficiengvin grarnmaticaliryjudgement \t'asobserved,widr a
sharp rise itt tftit meialinguisricabilitv bepeen the ages of 6 to 9 years'
theie findings were in agreement with the reports of Bohannon
(t926); Karmiioff-Smirh(1950); Hakes,Evan,and Tturmer (1980);and
VartKleek(1982).
In order to confirm these findings and alsoobtain nolrns olt a iar-gei
group of chikiren for the LPT, a simiial investigadorlwas undertaken
i,itf, ilO children ranging in age from 6 to ll years, wlth 30_eachfrom
in
Grade I rtu.ough Gradev lror more detailssee Ka]anth & suchiu-a,

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6
11/

I50 KARANTH

press;and Suchirra & Karanth, in press). The resultsconfirmed our ear-

lier findings that beginning at age 6 to 7 yearsand with a rapid spur at
about 7 to 8 years children becomeincreasingh prcficient in the gram-
maticalitvjudgement task. Even by the age of I I years,the upper limit
of the age range covered here, children's sensitivityto grammaticaligv
of given sentenceswas only about 80%. Gilen tlre overall correspon-
denceof this data with the earlier frndings (liaranrh, 1984), we specu-
lated that adult-like sensitivity to gramnraticality is acquired by
adolescence, since two of the 13 year olds in the fint study perfonned at
a levelof gAVaaccurac.y. Confirmation of this observation is being sought
in an ongoing snrdy on I I to 15 year olds enrolledin GradesVI to X.
Thesefindings are in agreementwith mudr of the earlier studies on
grammaticalityjudgement and menlinguistic arvareness. This observa-
tion that children begin to acquire metalingristic skills around mid-
ctriidhood and gradually increasetheir master,vover it can be inter-
preted as supporting all three causal theories-as a part of increasing
command over language, as being due to developmentalcognitive
ctrangesof decentration, and as being due to acquisitionof reading and
uriting skills.
Subsequently,in a study of acquired langrage disorders in adults
(liaranth, Ahuja, Nagaraj, Pandit, & Shivashurkar, 1991, 1992), 100
normal adults ranging in age from 20 to 80 1'earswere given dre same
raskof grammaticalityjudgement on the LPT. Of these100 subjects,67
rr.ereliterate lr'ith more than 4 year-sof formal schoolingand 33 were
illiteratewith rro formal schooling.The 67 literate adultsperformed sat-
isfactorilyon the test scoring an average of 90.9%and no one perform-
ing at chancelevel. Among the illiterates, on the otherhand, 9 of *re 33
either expressedtheir inabiliry to do what wasrequiredafter the itrsrruc-
tions weie given, did not complete all 150 items of the test, or
respondedindiscriminately, performing at chancelevel. The average
scoreof the 33 illiterates was63.87o.Even rthen the scoresof the 9 sub-
score of
-rle who did not complete the test were ontitted, the average
jecs
illiteratesrvorked out to be 7l.9Vo. The iHiteratesscored u*riformly
poorly across all subcategories.Sirnilar restrltswere observed on the
iiindi llanguagespoken in Nordr India) version of the LPT on a group
100 adult nadve speakersof Hindi, comprising bottrliteratesand illiter-
ares,suggesting*rat literacyis in irelf a valiable alfectingmetalinguistic
abilitiessuch as grammaticality- judgenent.
In comparisonwith literate aduls, the illirente adulr were also found
- ':erforr: pi-oi!" :;,- ; clinical tesi fcr api:asia,partimlarlv on tasks
s,,ch as auriitoiy verbal cornprehensionof courplexsyntacticstr-Llctures
and, to a lesserextent, with repetition and alnount of information con-
vevedin expressivespeech.Theseresults ale similarto *lat repol'ted by

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ORTHOCMPHICAND STRUCTUMLEFFECTS I5I

Lecourset at. (1987). Lecour et al. found statisticallysignificant differ-

encesbetlveenthe scoresof their literate and illiterate sub-populations
in task such as pointing, naming, and repetition, and emphasized tie
need for norlns that explicitly take educational level into account for
clinicaltestsof language.
Given our results-that the metalinguistic skill of grammaticaiib'
judgement is not present in children below the age of 6 years and grad-
ually develops over mid-childhood, and that the same is inadequateil
presentin illiterate adults as compaled to literate adulm-a rnore com-
prehensivestudy on 50 school-goingand 50 non-school-goingchildren
rn rhe age range of 6 to I I yearsand 30 literate and 50 illiteraie-aduli,
in the agerange of 21 to 40 yearswas talien up. Becauseilliterate aduits
also seemed to have some difiiculry on tasks such as auditory verbal
comprehensionof some verbal commands and_expressivetasks such as
naming and information giving (Lecours et al., 1987; Karanth et al.,
1992),the 160 subjectsof this snrdy were evaluatedon their abiliry to
comprehendand produce a range of s,Vntacticstructuresthrough pic-
s.11-s-pointingand descriptiontasks, in addition to the grammaticalin'
judgiment task on the LPT (for mo're details see Karanth' Kudva' &
Vlja-yan, in press). The resultsconfirmed our earlier observationthat lit-
erateand illiterate aduits differ considerablyin the metalinguistictaskof
grarnmadcalityjudgement. Differences betlveen the two gToups were
ilso seenin the tasks on comprehensionand producrionof some syntac-
tic strucilres, confirming our earlier fiIrdings that the lack of comPara-
ble sy-nUcticawareness among illiterates extends to tasks such as
auditon verbal comprehensionand expression,though not to the same
extentasseen in metalinguisrictaskssuch as grammaticaliryjudgement.
These differenceswere also present among the sdrool-going and non-
school-goingchildren. Though a developmental tr.endon all tasksrvere
seena*ong the two groupsof childrbn, the school-goingchildren per-
formed significantty better than the nonschooledchildren, suggesting
that theseikills are enhancedby acqtrisitionof literacy'
Repeatedly,in a seriesof investigationson grammaticalityjudgement,
we find rhai children begin to acquire these skills in mid-childhood
around6 years of age and g'adually master them over a period of time
until adolescence.Children who receive schoolingperforrn considerabll
better than nonschooled children, with this differencein performance
persistinginto adulthood. Ftu'ther,tiese differencesale also reflectedirt
iheir lufirage use. It is apparentthat dre acquisitionof literacy has ur
imporrarit,J" to play in-one'sability to.naster gtarnrnaticalitv- judge-
menf Formal eduiation enhancesthe ability to separate form and con-
tent, which is said to be the basis of metalinglistic skills such as
grammadcaliry judgement. Adult illiterates, thoseonly exPosure to form

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I52 KARANTH

is limited to the oral speech oulPut of other sPeakers,inclusiveof their

perfbrmance errors fail to develop this sensitivity of grammatical form
io the same extent as literate adults. The process of literagvacquisition
by reducing externalcues increasesone's ability to gather informarion
purely through the abstractionsof written language, in rurn leading to a
more abstractlevelof linguistic analysis.
That the acquisition of literacy aflecs linguistic awarenessis not
unknown. Work-on phonological awareness with acquisitionof literacy is
documented by Ehri (1979). Ehri's obsewationswere corroboratedby.
Morais, Carrr', Alegria, and Bertelson (1979), who demonstratedthat
arvarenessof phoneticunits in speechdoes not develop spontaneously
or as a result cf cognitive maturation but requires sPecialexperiences
such as learning to read.
prakash, Rekha,Nigam, and Ikranrh (in press) carried out a palallel
sedes of invesdgatjonson literacy and phonological awarenessin
Kannada- and Hindi-speaking adults (literate and illiterate) and chil-
dren. On metaphonologicalmeasuressuch as rhyme-recognition,sylla-
ble-delerion, phoneme-oddiry, and phoneme-deletion tasks it was
observed that-school-goingchildren in the age range of 6 to 9 years
(Grades I to III)per{ormed well on rhyme-recognitionand syllable-dele-
rion but poorlv on phoneme-oddiry and phorreme-deletion tasks.
Al*rough syllabiedelerion was uniformly phoneme deletion was
"rq',
uniforrnly difficult, witir only a slight improvement ovel the grades-
These results ar-econU-adictoryto those obtained in similar snrdieson
children lealning alphabetic scripts, and support the notion that pho-
neme awarenesslsnot a critical factor in nonalphabetic literacy,as the
children in this snrdyperfonned at above-average level on readinglvhile
faring poorlv on phoneme tasks. Becausethe level of representationto
xannlda is nor at a phonenric level, child-r'enlearning to read in
llennada may not necessarilydevelop phonemic awarenessin their early
literacy stageslike their Western counterparts.'However, thosechildren
,whowere &traordinaritv good at reading wel'e generally good on Pho-
judge-
nemstasks as rtell. It is relevant that even on the gralnmaticality
ment taskstherewerea few excepdonalilliterateswho performedrvell'
Irr a secondsnrdyin this series,phonological awarenessin adult liter-
ares and illiterateswas investigated in Hindi, which shales the sarne
orthographic feahrresof Kannada, both being based o^nthe Brahrni
s.r.lptlas^expecred,both illiterate and literate groups performedwell on
rh,vme-recogttirionand svllable-deletiontasks but po.9:ly on the pho-
nerne-deletiontask.Even sos, there wasa sigrrificant differencebetlveen
rhe literates and illiterateson the latter task,with the resultsshowingthe
influence of specificolthographic featulesof Flindi (for more detailssee
Prakashet al- in press).fhui the resultsclearll' demonstratedthat sen-

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AND STRUCTUMLEFFECTS I53

OKIHOGRAPHIC

sitiviry to rhymes and development of qvllable alvarenessale indePen-

dent of literary, though they' may be enhanced fifther by literaq'-
related factors.On the other hand, literacyskills in a semi-syllabicscript
are inadequatefor the development of phonemic alrareness'
In a third srudyusing the sameprocedul'es,the nvo $oYPs of subjecs
consisredof adult illiterates and biliterates.Whereas the illiterates were
native speakersof Kannada without an,yexposure to reading and r+rit-
ing, rhd biliterates were graduates proficient i]l both Iknnada and
fngtistr. The performance of the biliterateswas found to be superior iIr
all four usks, including phoneme-deletjonand phoneme-oddiq'tasks-
a result that was attributed to ttreir exPosure to alphabeticliteraq'.
These resultsclearly demonstrated that phoneme awarenessdoes not
develop spontaneouslybut is a consequencenot only of literacy,but of
alphabeticliteragvin particular.
ln brief, the results of these investigationson metaPhonologicaltasks
indicate that all subjects-illiterates, nonalphabetic uniliterates, and
Kannada-Englishbili terates-nonalphabetic unili terates,and Kannada-
English bilitirates-perforrned well in rhyme-recognition and syllable-
deietlon rasksbut bnly the biliterates (with exposure to alphabetic
scripts) could do well in phonemic-segmentationtasks.The analysis of
no.talphubeticuniliterates; responsesto these tasksdearly demonstrated
the influenceof rhe spelling sysremthel' *"." exposedjo. T" Pfrfol-
.mance of the Ibnnada-English biliterate subjects,on the other hand,
shorvhorvlearning the alphabetiCcodecould influence the processingof
a nonalphabeticsystem.

THE SCRIPT FACTOR

Theseresultson metalinguistictasksat the phonologital and grarnmati-

cal level from a nonalphabetic'milieuraisequesticrtrs. aboutthe specific
narure of the relationihips benveen literacy and vu'ious metalinguisuc
abiliries.It appears that not only is one's abiliry to nranipulate the suuc-
ntral fearurei'of language facilitated b,v the process of literacy_ acqtrisi-
tion bur, furtler, drelevel of represetttatjon of the language in the script
infllences specific gvpes of metalinguistic skills. The script emerges as a
variable in the snrclyof the metalinguisric and cogrrit.ive consequences of
leanting to read.
The iesultsof a few recent.investigtions on the cognitiveand tneta-
linguistic implicationsof lear:ring to read various sc'ipts are unequivo-
of
cal]t,aid (in press),in an itrvestigationof the effectsof direcrionaliry
scripr (Hindu vs. Urdu) on tlie mol'e gellet.al cogritive and representa-
tiorial pr-oceses, found rhar the directioirof the script influencedrelated

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I54 KAMNTH

task such as drawing and scanning of pictures, suggestingthat reading

habits do tend to influence perceprualand cognitiveactivity more gen-
erally. Geva (in press) examined children who were learning to read
bo*r- English an'd Hebrew, the scripts of which are different. She
reported that reading skills were not unique to each orthography
-*er.
bJcausegood reade.t good in both languages,and suggestedthat
language"and cognitive abiiities more general *ran those specifically
invitvel in decodlng a specificorthography are centralto reading. In
conrast, Koda (in piess) reported thar the effectsof learning to read a
first languagein one orthographic s,vsteminfluenceslearning to read a
"u
second tJ"g"ug. involving i diff".ettt orth.ographic syslel, on the
dis-
basisof her imdings that teiden of alphabetic scrips for-I-1 rvere
words in L2 much more
rupted by the p..r"nc" of difiicult" unfamiliar
seiiously'than*et" readers of morphological scriptsin Ll'

Indian Scripts

The Indian wriring s/-srems,be they of languages-of the Indo-a1an

have
gronp like Hindi, 6r those of Dravidian origin suchas Kannada,
Sdgnir^t.afrom the Brahmi script and hence have a common underly-
ingisystem.This system's semi-syllabic, with the sy!l{19 and not the
ohloneme(except in the caseof rhe vowels describedbelow) bei'g the
inr"ii.r, nitic iirdependent unit of writing. The substantialpart of the
i"tre, laksara)is th! consonantthat precedes the vowel,the vo*'el itself
sign attache! the conso-
t.irtg i.ptied or indicated by a secondary 1o
is used only when. it forms a mor-
,-J fni primary form of the vowel
bv itself or as an independent.syllable when it is not combined
pil;.
initial po.si-
i.i,f, pieceding consonanr,that is, when ir is in the word
"\ryiren*ori ,hu' one consona't pr-ecedesthe vowel,formi'g with
tion.
into a single com-
it u:tingt. syllable,their charactersmuit be combined
and it is rhesesyl-
oornd characrer,Reading is taughtsyllable by syllable
see l(arandr. 1985;
i;;r fi;h a.e sub-,r1id orwoids (for more details
Patel&Soper, 1987; Praliash&Joshi' 1989)'

I.'INGUAGE STRUCTURE

Ar the syntacticlevel, Iiannada is a Polysyllabic agglutinative^language

of the SO\r type
with numerousinflections. It has a 6asic word order
ar.esuffixed to the
urJ i, richly inflected $'ith syntactic markers that
by drree mark-
nour and verb srems. Personand gender a].e identified
marker; the pl}-
.r. *u.t. The singular has no p-tiiutr- disti.guishing
ralisdenotedbyaspecificma,.ker.Tlresevencasesaremar.kedby

q
I ls
 '1t!:leri*!a€rmgl|*Q;dx!ie-ajirir.:&#*S{r!rs*@Ei48}{Eq$*f,r*F'l5'
slsta'wii?rqnti*11{:11 r i: i ti=;Fi..a:***ry%€;,!{i

I "ruo.U
Pagc155 Thusday,Jmuary22,1998
3:57pM
o
d
.fl
+-
ORTHOCMPHICAND STRUCTUMLEFFECTS I55

adding vadoussuffixes to rhe noun srem to indicate different relation-

ships benveenthe noun and other constinlents of the sentence. Pro-
nouns are classifiedin accordancewith the person markers and when
marked for casethe pronounal stemschange. Most adjectivesare derir,-
atives of nounsor veibs. The verb stem gers inflecredwith different suf-
fixes and forms various verbal forms such as infinirives,imperatives,
or "defecrive"forms, verbal
participles, modal ar:xiliaries, dative-stat-ive
aspect marken, "causative"suffixes,"conditional" sufilxes,and verbaliz-
ers, making the verb phrase forms more complex than the noun sys-
tems. Nurnber adjective and adverbforms function in effectingchanges
in the noun phrase and verb phrase,respectivelv.Conditional clauses:
relative clauses,and cleft sentencesare possible bi' effectingchanges in
the verb phrase.A number of clitic constructionsare alsoavailable,mak-
ing Iknnada a richly inflected languagewith fairlv exrensivecase and
complex verb qvstems(Schiffman,1979).

.DISCUSSION

Prakashet al.'sresuls (in press)on the metaphonologicaltasksof pho-

neme oddity and phoneme deletion seem to be directlv consequent ro
the semi-syllabicnarure of the orthography. Itemrlise analysisof sub-
jects' perfonn:mce on phoneme oddity. revealed that children of all
grades performed quite well (70V0acaracy level, on average)on those
items in which the target phoneme was a consonant,with further
improvement over *re grades being entirely due to the improved per-
formance of higher graders on vowelitems. These resultscan be atrib-
uted to the syllabic srucnrre of Iknnada in rr'hich the syllable is
dominated by the form of the consonant, the associated vowel being
attached to it in its secondarv (lessdistinct) form. This visuaVspelling
strategywasalsoevident in phonemedeletion where, for example, if the
phonemes to be deleted were "arka" or "anuswara" (the nvo exceptionai
phonemes that have independent graphemes), aimost all the children
found them easily.This is in contrastto the obsen'ationmade by Per-
fetti, Beck, Bell, and Hughes (l9BB) that consonant blendssuch as /nV
resist segmentation into phoneme constinrents. This relarionship
beween segnental awarenessand alphabeticliteracr wasalso evident in
the results obtained from literate and illiterate adults on these tasks, in
which the inlluence of specific orthographic feanres of Hindi was very
vivid and furtier substantiatesour obsen'ation that the orthographic
feaarres favouring segmentation skills are script-specific(for more
details seePrakashet al., in press).The res';ils on the K.annada-English
biliterates further supports this theoreticalrelarionshipbetweensegrnen-

/,N
Qi

a
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 pirr:' :.4:ri:r€4, : r1.r€:i*4k*B?!€ds!-}+:::1:
;'t-trryr

# 'Sp-
"hop.O
Pags156Thusdalr,Januar-v
22,19983:57pM

e
I56 I(AMNTH

tal awarenessand alphabeticlireracy,for thesebiliterates who had learnt

an alphabetic scripi performed well on the phoneme-oddiry and pho-
neme-deletion tasksin the syllabicscripr
Just as the level of representarionin the script affects the extent to
which phonological awareness develops,the specificstrucrural characrer-
istics of the language could differenrially affect orher metalinguistic
skills. Given the agglurinative,highly inJlectednarure of Kannada syn-
tay, it is possible that lack of exposureto literacyaffects the metalinguis-
tic task of grammaticalitvjudgement to a greaterextent than it would in
languageslike Englishwhere the synraxis expressedto a comparatively
larger extent through free morphe.mesand rvordorder.
That script-specificfearuresare a factor to be considered in reading,
models of reading, and teaching of reading has been substantiatedby
evidencefrom the reading disorden. Se.veral casereports of a.dulmrvith
acquired reading disordersexhibiring different parr"irrr acrossdifferent
scrips have been documentedover the lastcoupleof decades(Sasanuma,
1974;Karanth, 1981,1985).Two major interpretadonsof thesedissocia-
tions have been offered.The first atrributesthe differential parternsto a
lesion affecring neural representationof reading skills in one language
while sparing the other, the rwo languagessupposedlybeing organized
differentJy in the brain. The second interpretation is based on rhe
hvpothesis that nvo alternateroutes are used in all reading-the rvhole
word and the phonic. Different scriptsrely more upon one or the other
and'the severity of the dyslexia in the different languages is said to be
dependent upon the extent to which the language depends upon the
affectedroute (Obler, 1984).Our data on developmentaldyslexiain bilit-
erates (Karanth, 1992),however, is not. in consonancewith *re above
hvpotheses.On the basisof our data on young developmental dyslexics
who are differentially affectedin English asagainsrKannada and Hindi,
we have argued rhat the differenrial patterns and different degreesof
severity seen in thesescrips are dependentupon whether the su-ategy
required by the particularscript is heavilydependentupon the particular
component, the neural underpinnings of which is disturbed, rather than
due to selective disnrrbanceof "routes" or "representations."
The effect of languagestructLlreon the processingof syntax, hypothe-
sized by us with reference to the grammaticaliryjudgement task and
sensitivigvto syntax,also has some suPportfrom the acquired language
disorders.That agrammatjsmmanifestsitselfdifferendy in different lan-
guages depending on the structure of the language has been don-r-
mented (Grodzinsky, 1984; Sriviriva, I990). As in the adult alexicsand
dwelopmental dyslexics,differendal patternsand severitv of the disor-
der across the n'volanguagesof the bilingual aphasicwith agrammatism
have also been documented(Rangamani,1989).

0-r
-
l.K
Itgi
,d
+o+ st #
 !If,iryi*jtg&i{r;u :j,u r/: 4*$j: irls!@'F.3FF_'E
ire r.'.-f**ial tlyd+q4Eqep1t.

#
-|\
'$i
.l"p.e Pagei 1 ' i?rusday,Jauary 1r, 1998 j;57 p.'.:

qr
ORTHOCMPHICAND STRUCTUML EFFECTS I57

Our results on a series of snrdies on metalinguistic skills substantiare

the observarion that mehlinguisric abilitiesdevelop maturationally but
certain kinds of language experiences,including l-earning to read and
write, can enhance it to a significant degree.This is rroi to state *rat
metalinguistic abilitiesand a high degreeof sensirivityto languagesrruc-
ture cannot be achievedwithout schooling,for the master/ of the manr.
norschooled literatesof tradirional oral societiesover languageand lii-
eranrre is well documented.The emphasisinstead is on the observation
that schooled literacy, by and large, automaticallybrings about these
metalinguistic skills and a heightened sensitiviw to language,possiblv
triggering relatec cognitive abilities. Along with the grearer accessro
informarion, it is perhaps rhese abilities rhat make lirerac.vsuch an
important tool of social change. An increasedinteresr in and sensitivin,
to the kinds of activitiesthat lead ro rheselinguisricand cognitiveconse-
quencesof lireracvis therefore called for.
Furthermore, the substantial effects of language structure and scripr-
specificfeatureson menlinguistic abilitiesrequire thar the significanceof
thesefactors be acknowledgedand takeninto consideration,particularly
in theoretical modelsof *re acquisitionand use of language and literaoi.
Another imporrant aspecr of the interrelationships benueenscripr
acquisition in reading and reading disordersis the method of insu-ut-
rion. Methods of instruction for reading have seldom been script-spe-
cific. The "whole word" and "phonic" methods developed for
alphaberic.scriptsare being advocatedfor all scrips without taking into
consideration the essenrialfeanrresof eachscript or script rype.If differ-
ent scripts are enhancedby different strategies,ir follows that the teach-
ing of reading callsfor script-specificmethods.

CONCLUSION

Different scripts enhancedifferent rypesof metalinguisticabiliries.These

need to be investigatedfurther, along with a greater probe into their lin-
guistic and cogrritiveconsequences.Betterunderstanding of the factors
involved in processingdifferenr scriptswill be relevanr not only for theo-
retical models of reading and literacy but also for the teaching of read-
ing and managementof the acquired and developmentaldyslexias.

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