Onsets and rimes as units of spoken syllables: Evidence from children

JOURNAL OF EXPERIMENTAL CHILD PSYCHOLOGY 39, 161-181 (1985)

Onsets and Rimes as Units of Spoken Syllables: Evidence from Children

REBECCA TREIMAN

Indiana Universiry

The effects of syllable structure on the development of phonemic analysis and reading skills were examined in four experiments. The experiments were motivated by theories that syllables consist of an onset (initial consonant or cluster) and a rime (vowel and any following consonants). Experiment 1 provided behavioral support for the syllable structure model by showing that 8-year-olds more easily learned word games that treated onsets and rimes as units than games that did not. Further support for the cohesiveness of the onset came from Experiments 2 and 3, which found that 4- and 5-year-olds less easily recognized a spoken or printed consonant target when it was the first phoneme of a cluster than when it was a singleton. Experiment 4 extended these results to printed words by showing that consonant-consonant-vowel nonsense syllables were more difficult for beginning readers to decode than consonant-vowel-consonant syllables. o 1985 Academic Press. Inc.

The ability to analyze speech into phonemes, or phonemic analysis ability, seems to play an important role in learning to read (e.g., Gough & Hillinger, 1980; Liberman, 1982; Rozin & Gleitman, 1977; Treiman & Baron, 1983). In order to grasp the correspondences between printed words and spoken words, children must be aware that spoken words are composed of phonemes and that each phoneme is typically represented with a different letter. Yet the analysis of spoken syllables into phonemes tends to be difficult for prereaders and beginning readers. Many 5year- olds cannot recognize whether a spoken syllable contains a specified phoneme (e.g., Marsh & Mineo, 1977; McNeil & Stone, 1965). Phoneme substitution tasks, which require children to replace one or more phonemes of a syllable with other phonemes, are difficult even for older children

This research was supported by NSF Grant BNS 81-09892 and NICHHD Grant HD18387. I gratefully acknowledge the assistance of Lauren Berg, Peggy Ericson, Ann Farrell, Shellie Haut-Rogers, Michele MacKinnon, Joe Montelongo, Mary Polson, and Debra Wilkerson in various phases of the research. Dick Aslin, Kathy Hirsh-Pasek, Brett Kessler, Linda Smith, and two anonymous reviewers gave helpful comments on earlier drafts of the manuscript. Requests for reprints should be directed to Dr. Rebecca Treiman, Department of Psychology, Wayne State University, 71 West Warren Avenue, Detroit, MI 48202.

161

0022-0965/85 $3.00 Copyright @ 1985 by Academic Press, Inc.

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162 REBECCA TREIMAN

(see review by Golinkoff, 1978). Finally, most nursery school and kindergarten children cannot master a task in which they must tap out the number of phonemes in a syllable, although many can learn to tap out the number of syllables in a word (Liberman, Shankweiler, Fischer, & Carter, 1974). The present series of experiments asked whether children’s performance in phonemic analysis tasks and in other reading-related tasks is affected by the syllabic structure of the stimuli. That is, does the structure of a spoken syllable influence children’s ability to analyze it into its constituent phonemes?

The experiments reported here were based on a view of syllable structure that has been proposed by psychologists and linguists such as Hackett (1967), MacKay (1970, 1972, 1978, 1982), Cairns and Feinstein (1982), Fudge (1969), and Halle and Vergnaud (1980; Vergnaud & Halle, 1979). In this view, the phonemes that comprise spoken syllables are not simply strung together. Rather, the phonemes within a syllable have a hierarchical internal organization. They are grouped into two major constituents: the initial consonant or consonant cluster and the vowel plus any following consonants. The former unit is typically called the initial consonant group in the psychological literature (e.g., MacKay, 1972) and the onset in the linguistic literature (e.g., Vergnaud & Halle, 1979). The latter is called the vocalic group or rime. The labels onset and rime will be used here for brevity. As an example, the onset of the spoken syllable “sap” is “s” and the rime is “ap.” The vowel is thus more closely linked with the final consonant than with the initial one. The onset of the syllable “spa” is “,p” and the rime is “a.” Here, the initial consonant cluster is said to be a cohesive unit.

Behavioral support for the idea that onsets and rimes are cohesive units of the syllable comes from several sources. A study of errors in the spontaneous production of speech first led MacKay (1970, 1972) to articulate a hierarchical model of the syllable. He noted, for example, that spoonerisms often involve the exchange of initial consonant clusters. One such error, attested by Fromkin (1971), is the production of “sweater drying” as “dreater swying.” Only infrequently-as in Fromkin’s example of “brake fluid” said as “blake fruid”40 reversals break up the onset. Thus, onsets and rimes appear to act as cohesive units at some point in the speech production process. MacKay (1982) has recently proposed a theory of how such units are ordered and activated in the production of speech.

Additional evidence for onset and rime units comes from experiments with adult subjects. Treiman (1983) found that novel word games that divided syllables at the boundary between the onset and the rime were learned more readily than games that broke up the onset or the rime. In one experiment, subjects heard two CCVCC (consonant-consonant- vowel-consonant-consonant) syllables and were asked to combine them

ONSETS AND FUMES 163

to form one new syllable. The easiest combination rule proved to be one in which the onset (CC) of the first syllable was blended with the rime (VCC) of the second syllable. For example, it was easier to learn a rule by which “krint” and “glupth” combined to form “krupth” than a rule by which they combined to form “klupth,” “kripth,” or “krinth.” A study by Treiman, Salasoo, Slowiaczek, and Pisoni (1982) provided further evidence for the cohesiveness of the onset. In this study, adult subjects took longer to identify a target consonant (e.g., “s”) in the initial position of a syllable when it was part of a consonant cluster (as in the syllable “spa”) than when it was a singleton (as in the syllables “sap” or “,a”). Thus, even though adults can analyze onsets into their component phonemes, such analysis may require some additional time.

Although several studies have examined the status of onsets and rimes for adult subjects, few studies have been done with children. Such studies are of particular interest in light of children’s generally poor performance in tasks that demand the explicit analysis of syllables into phonemes. Indeed, this poor performance has led to the hypothesis (Treiman & Baron, 1981; Treiman & Breaux, 1982) that young children perceive spoken syllables primarily as undifferentiated wholes. A strong form of this hypothesis might predict that children would have trouble with any task that requires them to divide syllables into smaller units, whether the division is at the boundary between the onset and the rime or at some other point. In contrast, a finding that tasks of the former type were easier than tasks of the latter type even for children would provide additional support for theories of syllable structure. It would also suggest that syllable structure plays a role in the development of ability to analyze speech into phonemes.

One study relevant to the role of syllable structure for children was carried out by Barton, Miller, and Macken (1980). Working with 4- to 5-year-olds, these investigators found evidence that some children treated initial consonant clusters as units. When asked to provide the first sound in “swing,” for instance, these children said /swa/ rather than /s/. (See the bottom of Table 1 for a key to the phonetic notation used in this paper.) These results suggest that children treat onsets as units before they analyze them into their component phonemes. That is, at some point in the development of phonemic analysis ability children may be consciously aware that “swing” contains the smaller unit /SW/, but not aware that Iswl can be analyzed as Is/ followed by lwl.

The experiments reported here further tested the notion that syllable structure affects children’s performance in phonemic analysis tasks and in other reading-related tasks. Positive results should provide additional evidence for theories of syllable structure and should also shed light on the development of phonemic awareness and reading skills.

164 REBECCA TREIMAN

EXPERIMENT 1

The first experiment involved a phoneme substitution task, one test of phonemic analysis ability. Children were asked to learn two different ways of transforming three-phoneme stimulus syllables. In one type of game-Game A-the first two phonemes of each stimulus were replaced with two fixed phonemes. For example, the first and second phonemes of every stimulus syllable might be replaced with M. In the second type of game-Game B-the last two phonemes of each syllable were replaced. The stimuli were either CVC syllables or CCV syllables. If syllable structure affects children’s ability to perform this task, the relative ease of Game A and Game B should depend on the structure of the stimulus syllables. CVC syllables are composed of two constituents, a C onset and a VC rime. For these syllables, Game B, which substitutes a VC for the VC constituent, should be relatively easy to learn. Game A should be more difficult, since it treats the initial CV, which is not a natural constituent of the syllable, as a unit. The reverse pattern of results is expected for CCV syllables. These syllables are said to consist of a CC onset followed by a V rime. Game A should be relatively easy for CCV stimuli, since it replaces the entire onset. Game B, which requires the subject to replace one phoneme of the onset and also the rime, should be more difficult.

Method

Procedure. Each child was told that he or she would learn a “word game” that involved both real and nonsense words. This game transformed each “word” into a new one by changing some of its sounds. The experimenter explained that all the “words” changed in the same way, and that the child should try to figure out the pattern. On each trial, the experimenter said the stimulus two times and the child repeated it two times. Any misrepetitions were corrected. The child then attempted to give the response. The experimenter praised the child if he or she answered correctly and provided the correct answer if the child’s response was incorrect.

All children were tested individually in a quiet room. They learned one type of game (A or B) in the first session and the other type of game in a second session. At least 2 weeks elapsed between sessions.

Stimuli. Within each condition of the experiment-the CVC condition and the CCV condition-there were eight pairs of games. The games in each pair used the same list of 18 stimulus syllables. The games differed in that they transformed the syllables in two different ways. Game A replaced the first and second phonemes of the stimulus and Game B replaced the second and third phonemes of the stimulus. Table 1 shows a sample pair of games from each condition. In the CVC condition, Game A replaced the initial CV of each stimulus with the replacement phonemes

ONSETS AND RIMES 165

ill\/. Game B substituted /AY for the final VC. In the CCV condition, Game A replaced the CC of each stimulus with /sl/ and Game B replaced the CV with /li/.

The eight pairs of games in each condition used different stimulus syllables and different replacement phonemes. This was done to ensure that the results would not be specific to particular phonemes. The replacement phonemes for each pair of games in the CVC condition differed only in their order. In the example, /lo/ was used in Game A and /AY in Game B. In the CCV condition, one of the same consonants (/l/ in the present example) was used for both games in a pair. The responses for each game always included three tokens of each of six different syllables. All stimuli and responses were phonologically legal in English. Thus, the final vowels of syllables in the CCV condition were vowels that can end a word (e.g., /i/, /e/) rather than vowels that cannot (e.g., /E/, /a$). A majority of the stimuli were nonwords. An effort was made to match the two games in a pair for the number of real word responses. Although exact matching was not always possible, analyses reported below indicate that lexical status did not affect performance.

Subjects. The subjects for Experiment 1 were 48 children, ranging in age from 7 years, 0 months to 9 years, 4 months. Twenty-four subjects were assigned to each condition, with the mean age of subjects in each condition being 8 years, 0 months. Within each condition, three subjects learned each pair of games. Half the subjects had Game A followed by Game B and half had the reverse order. All subjects in this and subsequent experiments were native speakers of English.

Results and Discussion

Table 2 gives the results in terms of four measures of performance- number of correct responses, position of first correct response, longest run of consecutive correct responses, and number of different correct responses. These results are pooled across the two presentation orders. Analyses of variance were carried out for a 2 (conditions) x 2 (game

TABLE 1 SAMPLE STIMULI FOR EXPERIMENT 1

CVC condition

CCV condition

Stimulus

/f&g/ /jut/

/mod lgwel /fru/ /brai/

Game A response Game B response

/lAgI IfAl! nAtl /j.All nanl /mAI/ Isle/ lglil IShI Illi/ /SlZlil /bli/

Note. Key to phonetic notation: i, beet; e, bet; e, bait; ae, bat; ai, bite; u, boot; o, boat; A, but; 3, bought; a, bomb; a, sofa; oi, boy; j, jam; 6, they.

166 REBECCA TREIMAN

TABLE 2 MEAN SCORES IN EXPERIMENT 1 AS A FUNCTION OF CONDITION AND GAME TYPE

CVC condition CCV condition

Game A Game B Game A Game B

Number correct” First correct trial Longest run” Number of different

correct response@

7.21 9.00 8.42 5.13 9.50 9.00 8.17 11.92 6.21 7.88 6.67 4.29

3.75 3.88 4.00 2.71

’ Maximum = 18. b Maximum = 6.

type) repeated measures design, using each of the four measures as the dependent variable. The four analyses yielded similar results. In no instance was there a main effect of condition or a main effect of game type (p > .lO in all cases). However, all four analyses revealed significant in- teractions between condition and game type (F(l) 46) = 11.82, p < .002, for number of correct responses; F(1, 46) = 4.49, p < .04, for position of first correct response; F(1, 46) = 7.41, p < .Ol, for longest run; and F(1, 46) = 4.08, p < .05, for number of different correct responses). Planned comparisons showed that in the CVC condition, Game B was significantly easier than Game A for two of the four measures (t(23) = 2.09, p < .025, one tailed for number of correct responses; t(23) = .41 for position of first correct trial; t(23) = 1.83, p < .05, one tailed for longest run; t(23) = 0.30 for number of different correct responses). That is, the rule that transformed the VC (or rime) was easier to learn than the rule that transformed the CV. In the CCV condition, the reverse pattern of results emerged. Here, Game A was significantly easier than Game B according to all four measures (t(23) = 2.73, p < .Ol, one tailed for number of correct responses; t(23) = 2.35, p < .025, one tailed for position of first correct trial; t(23) = 2.03, p < .05, one tailed for longest run; t(23) = 2.29, p < .025, one tailed for number of different correct responses). The superiority of Game A in this condition indicates that subjects could treat the CC (onset) as a unit more easily than the final cv.

Post hoc analyses (Scheffe method) showed that Game B of the CCV condition-the game which required subjects to break up the onset- was the most difficult of the four games taught in the experiment (F(1, 46) = 13.02, 6.85, 9.41, and 8.30 for number of correct responses, position of first correct response, longest run, and number of different correct responses, respectively; p < .02 for all). This finding suggests that initial consonant clusters or onsets are particularly cohesive units.

Children’s errors in learning the four types of games supported the


conclusions drawn above. Of particular interest are children’s errors in the two more difficult games, those that divided the syllables at nonnatural boundaries. These were Game A of the CVC condition and Game B of the CCV condition. In Game A of the CVC condition, which required children to replace the initial CV and retain the final C of the stimulus, the most common error was to retain the entire VC. That is, children often kept the whole rime rather than just the final consonant of the stimulus, producing a rhyming response. A similar tendency to retain a natural unit of the syllable was seen with Game B of the CCV condition, which required children to keep the initial C and change the second C and the V. Here, the most frequent error of commission was to retain the entire onset and change just the rime. For example, a child might change /gwe/ to /gwi/ rather than /gli/.

Additional analyses showed that the proportion correct on items with real word responses and items with nonword responses did not differ (t(44) = 0.78; three subjects were excluded from this analysis because their forms contained no items with real word answers).

EXPERIMENT 2’

The results of Experiment 1 show that phoneme substitution tasks that involve the postulated natural constituents of the syllable-onsets or rimes-are easier for children to learn than tasks that involve nonnatural units. Especially difficult, it appears, are tasks that break up the onset. In light of these results, Experiment 2 looked more closely at the onset. Rather than using a phoneme substitution task, considered among the hardest of phonemic analysis tasks (Golinkoff, 1978), Experiment 2 used the easier phoneme recognition task. Consequently, younger subjects could be tested. Experiment 2 asked whether the structure of a spoken syllable affects children’s ability to recognize a target phoneme within that syllable. Specifically, do children more often fail to recognize a syllable-initial target when the target is the initial phoneme of a cluster than when it is a singleton?

Method

Procedure. At the start of each session the child was shown a puppet and was told the puppet’s favorite sound. After repeating this target sound, the child was told that the puppet liked all “words” that began with the target. The child would hear some “words” and would judge whether the puppet liked them. A series of practice trials served to familiarize the child with the task. On each practice trial, the experimenter

’ Experiment 2 was reported in the author’s doctoral dissertation (Treiman, 1980/1981). The results presented here differ slightly from those reported earlier due to a difference in the criteria for excluding a subject’s results.

168 REBECCA TREIMAN

pronounced the practice stimulus and the child repeated it. The experimenter told the child whether the stimulus began with the puppet’s favorite sound. For positive items the puppet was made to react gleefully; for negative items it acted sad. After the experimenter demonstrated each practice stimulus, the child heard a tape-recorded version of the stimulus. The child was asked to repeat it and to say whether it started with the target. Errors on practice items were corrected.

After completion of the practice phase, the test phase began. The child heard each test stimulus from the tape, repeated it, and then judged whether it began with the target. To make the task more enjoyable, the child was encouraged to hold the puppet and to make it “say” the answers. The child was not told whether his or her phoneme judgments were correct. However, if the child repeated a test stimulus incorrectly the tape was rewound and the stimulus played again. This procedure was repeated, if necessary, until the child’s pronunciation was correct.

Each child participated in three sessions-two conditions in which the target was /s/ and one in which the target was /f/. These phonemes were chosen because they can be pronounced in isolation. The sessions were held several days apart. A different puppet was used for each target phoneme. Order of conditions and assignment of puppets to targets were approximately balanced across subjects.

The stimulus tape was recorded by a male speaker who did not know the purpose of the experiment. The tape was played back to the children over a Uher 4400 tape recorder.

Stimuli. The practice phase for each condition contained 6 stimuli, 3 positive and 3 negative. The test phase contained 18 stimuli, 12 positive and 6 negative. Positive stimuli formed groups of 3-a CV syllable, a CVC syllable, and a CCV syllable. The items in a group overlapped in their phonemic composition. Sample groups are /sa/, /San/, /sna/ for the /s/ condition and /fo/, /fol/, /flo/ for the /f/ condition. There were 12 such groups of test stimuli in all, 8 for /s/ and 4 for /f/. Two additional groups, one of syllables with initial /s/ and one of syllables with initial /f/, were used in the practice phase. Negative items were comparable in syllable structure to positive items, begin equally divided among Cs, CVs, and CCVs. However, they did not begin with /s/ or /f/. A complete list of the test phase stimuli appears in Table 3. (Note that several CV syllables with initial /2/ occurred twice in the experiment, but always in different sessions .)

All stimuli were phonologically legal syllables of English. Nonsense syllables were used when possible, since a previous study found that phoneme recognition performance is better with meaningless stimuli than with meaningful stimuli (McNeil & Stone, 1965). A few real word stimuli were included, with equal numbers of real words in the CV, CVC, and CCV categories.


TABLE 3 STIMULI AND RESULTS FOR EXPERIMENT 2

Positive stimuli Error rates Negative stimuli Error rates

s conditions se sem sme sa sap spa so son sno Sai

sait stai so

sol

slo se

set ste si sik ski sa san sna

f condition fa fal fla fi fir fri fo fol fl0

fu fur fru

.08

.25

.58

.08

.17

.33

.08

.25

.25

.25

.17

.67

.17

.33

.25 .08 .17 .17 .08 .oo .17 .08 .17 .17

.08

.17

.17

.08

.oo

.08

.17

.oo

.25

.17

.oo

.25

s conditions t3 van kwe ko zir broi gi nik tra te vul PI0

f condition nai mir bli Ii vol &

.25

.oo

.oo

.oo

.33

.oo

.17

.08

.08

.25

.oo

.oo

.17

.17

.17

.08

.33

.25

Test stimuli in each condition were arranged in a pseudorandom order. Each half of the list contained two of each type of positive item and three negative items. No more than three positive or three negative items occurred in succession. Practice stimuli were ordered randomly, with the constraints that a positive item occur first and than no more than two positive or two negative items occur in succession.

170 REBECCA TREIMAN

Subjects. Twelve children ranging in age from 4 years, 6 months to 6 years, 5 months (mean age 55) served as subjects. To ensure that subjects were neither at floor nor ceiling on the phoneme recognition task (and that effects of linguistic factors on performance could therefore be assessed), two criteria were used. First, any potential subject whose performance over the first two sessions of the experiment was at or below the level expected by chance was replaced. Two children originally tested were excused for this reason. Second, any potential subject who scored perfectly in the first session was replaced. Six children originally tested were excused for this reason.


The error rates on each of the experimental stimuli are shown in Table 3. Performance on positive items, or those beginning with the target, was submitted to an analysis of variance for a 3 (syllable structure) x 12 (syllable group) x 12 (subjects) mixed design. The main effect of syllable structure was significant (F(2, 22) = 7.18, p < .004). The error rate was 12% on CV syllables, 14% on CVC syllables, and 28% on CCV syllables. Planned comparisons revealed no reliable error difference between CV and CVC syllables (F(1, 22) = 0.19). The number of errors on CCV syllables, however, significantly exceeded the average number of errors on CV and CVC syllables (F(1, 22) = 14.28, p < .OOl). That is, children more often missed the target phoneme when it was part of a consonant cluster than when it was a singleton. Indeed, four children made 50% or more errors on CCV syllables, while only one did so on CVC syllables and none on CV syllables. A main effect of syllable group was also found in the analysis of variance (F(11, 121) = 2.16, p c.02). This effect indicates that children made more errors on some groups of syllables than on others. Syllable group did not, however, interact with syllable structure (F(22, 242) = 1.35, p > .lO). Another analysis of variance was carried out across stimuli. This analysis too showed a significant effect of syllable structure (F(2,22) = 7.83,~ < .003), indicating that the effect did generalize across stimuli.

Performance on negative items did not vary as a function of the syllabic structure of the item-CV, CVC, or CCV (F(2, 22) = .86). The overall error rate on negative items was 13%. Performance on negative items was further analyzed in terms of the phonetic similarity between the initial phoneme of the negative item and the target phoneme. One measure of phonetic similarity was a linguistic measure-the number of distinctive features in the Chomsky and Halle (1968) system that differed between the two phonemes in question. This measure correlated - .30 with number of errors on negative items (t(16) = - 1.26, p > .lO, one tailed). That is, children tended to make fewer errors on items whose initial phonemes differed by more features from the target, but this trend was not significant.


A second measure of phonetic similarity was based on subjective judgments of phonetic similarity (Singh, Woods, & Becker, 1972). This measure was obtained by asking adults to rate the similarity of pairs of phonemes followed by /a/ on a 7-point scale, with 1 being most similar and 7 being least similar. As mean ratings increased (i.e., as phonemes became more dissimilar), errors tended to decrease. However, the correlation did not reach significance (r = - .35, t(16) = - 1.39, p > .05, one tailed). Although the correlations were not significant, inspection of Table 3 does suggest some effect of phonetic similarity. The highest error rates were to the two stimuli whose initial phonemes (/z/ in the /s/ condition and /v/ in the /f/ condition) differed from the target only in voicing.

The major finding of Experiment 2 was that children were less able to recognize a syllable-initial consonant when that consonant was part of a cluster than when it was not. This finding suggests that children have difficulty analyzing syllable-initial consonant clusters into their constituent phonemes. Whether a singleton initial consonant is followed by one phoneme (as in a CV) or two phonemes (as in a CVC) does not appear to influence phoneme recognition performance. These results with children, using error rate as the dependent measure, parallel those recently obtained with adults, using reaction time as the dependent measure (Trei- man et al., 1982). Just as children more often miss a syllable-initial target in a cluster than a singleton, adults take longer to recognize a target when it begins a consonant cluster.

EXPERIMENT 3

The results of Experiment 1 and 2 are consistent with the view that children have difficulty analyzing syllable-initial consonant clusters or onsets into phonemes. The results are limited, however, in at least two ways. First, both experiments used primarily nonword stimuli. Also, Experiment 2 used only two target consonants, the fricatives /s/ and /f/. Experiment 3 attempted to extend the earlier results to real words and to a wider variety of targets, stop consonants as well as fricatives, In addition, the task of Experiment 3 used printed rather than spoken targets. In this picture-letter matching task, similar to one commonly employed in kindergarten and first-grade classrooms, children saw a series of pictures. They judged whether the name of each picture began with a target letter. Of primary interest in Experiment 3 was children’s performance on words in which the target consonant was the initial phoneme of a cluster and words in which the target was a singleton. If children treat initial consonant clusters as units and if they have difftculty analyzing these units into their component phonemes, they should more easily recognize a target in a singleton than in a cluster. For example, it should be easier to recognize that “sink” starts with S than that “snake” starts with S. (Uppercase type is used to signify printed letters and words.) A secondary aim of Experiment 3 was to determine whether

172 REBECCA TREIMAN

performance on negative items is affected by phonetic similarity. In Experiment 2, the correlation between errors on negative items and rated similarity of the initial phoneme of the negative item to the target did not reach significance. To further test for such a relationship, Experiment 3 compared performance on negative items whose initial phonemes were rated as close to the target and negative items whose initial phonemes were rated as far from the target.

Method

Procedure. Each child was shown a sheet of paper on which 12 pictures were drawn. The experimenter asked the child to name each picture. If the child offered a name different from the one intended, for example calling a pictured animal a “horse” instead of a “zebra,” the experimenter suggested that the child use the intended label. Next, the experimenter showed the child the letter that would be the target for that sheet. The letter was printed on an index card in uppercase type. The experimenter asked the child to name the letter. She provided the correct name if the child did not know it. The experimenter then asked the child whether the name of each picture began with the target letter.

The order of presentation of the eight sheets of pictures that comprised the experiment was randomized for each subject. The experiment was completed in a single session if the child remained interested and attentive; otherwise it was spread over two sessions.

Stimuli. The target consonants were S, F, B, and P. There were 24 line drawings for each target consonant-12 positive items, the names of which began with the target, and 12 negative items, the names of which did not begin with the target. The positive items included 6 in which the initial consonant was a singleton, and 6 in which the initial consonant was the first phoneme of a cluster. The negative items included 6 whose initial consonants were rated as phonetically far from the target, and 6 whose initial consonants were rated as close to the target. The far negative and close negative items used, for each target, the four consonants rated as least similar and the four consonants rated as most similar, according to the ratings of Singh et al. (1972).’ Table 4 gives sample stimuli for the S and P conditions. The average frequency of the written forms of the singleton items in children’s reading material (Carroll Davies, 8z Richman, 1971) was 159; the average frequency of the cluster items was 164. The frequencies of the far negative and close negative items were also closely matched, being 272 and 249, respectively. The two types of positive items and the two types of negative items also include equal numbers of one-syllable and two-syllable words. All stimuli

’ One exception was made in the case of the S target. /a/ is rated as very similar to /s/ but few common picturable words begin with /a/. It was therefore replaced with /v/.


TABLE 4 SAMPLE STIMULI FOR EXPERIMENT 3

S condition P condition

Positive items Singleton

Cluster

Negative items Far

Close

sink saddle snake slipper

nose crab zebra thumb

peanut pants pretzel plate

chair needle bone cookie

but one (a verb) were nouns. Two sheets of 12 stimuli each were constructed for each target, with positive and negative items randomly intermixed.

Subjects. The subjects included 12 preschoolers who were to enter kindergarten the following year (mean age 4,8; range 4,2-5,5) and 12 kindergartners (mean age 5,6; range 5,2-6,0).


Table 5 gives the mean number correct on each of the four types of items. These results are pooled across conditions, as preliminary analyses revealed no differences among the four target conditions. An analysis of variance for positive items using a 2 (subject group) x 2 (item type) repeated measures design yielded main effects of subject group (F(1, 22) = 7.51,~ < .02)anditem type(F(1,22) = 5.88,~ <. 03)andnointeraction between these factors (F(1, 22) = 0.20). That is, kindergartners performed better than preschoolers and children performed better on singleton items than cluster items. The difference between singleton and cluster items was also significant when tested across stimuli (t(46) = 2.07, p < .03, one tailed).

TABLE 5 MEAN NUMBER CORRECT IN EXPERIMENT 3 AS A FUNCTION OF ITEM TYPE AND AGE

Preschoolers (n = 12) Kindergartners (n = 12)

Positive items Singleton 17.33 Cluster 16.00

Negative items Far 13.17 Close 14.00

Note. Maximum score per cell = 24.

22.08 21.17

21.75 20.07

174 REBECCA TREIMAN

An analysis of performance on negative items showed a main effect of subject group (F(1, 22) = 11.33, p < .003), with kindergartners again outperforming preschoolers. However, there was no main effect of item type (F(1, 22) = 0.33) and no interaction between subject group and item type (F(1, 22) = 3.43, p > .07). These results show that subjects did not perform significantly better on negative items whose initial phonemes were rated as dissimilar to the target than on negative items whose initial phonemes were rated as similar to the target. Again, however, as in Experiment 2, a limited effect of phonetic similarity emerged in the fact that more errors were made on the seven negative items whose initial phonemes differed from the target in the single feature of voicing than on the other negative items. A test across stimuli found a highly reliable difference between these two categories of stimuli (t(46) = 5.81, p < .OOi, one tailed).

The increase in overall ability to perform the task between preschool and kindergarten reflects the fact that 4 of the 12 preschoolers performed at a chance level, whereas none of the kindergartners did. Preschoolers tended to have a bias to answer “yes” (x*(l) = 19.01, p < .OOl), leading to more correct responses on positive than negative items. No significant bias was apparent for kindergartners (x’(l) = 0.89).

The major result of Experiment 3-that children performed more poorly on cluster items than on singleton items-is consistent with the view that onsets of syllables are cohesive units. This finding extends the results of Experiment 2 by showing that children’s difficulty in recognizing initial elements of clusters occurs with real words, with a wider range of consonant targets, and with printed in addition to spoken targets. Although the results of Experiments l-3 have been interpreted in terms of syllable structure theories, an alternative explanation for the results of Experiment 3 might be that children were previously taught the initial letters of some of the singleton words in the experiment. This could happen if parents and teachers more often used words beginning with singletons than words beginning with clusters to illustrate the sounds of letters. Such an inter- pretation, however, would have difficulty explaining the results of Ex- periment 2, which employed unfamiliar stimuli. If it is true that adults use singleton words at the expense of cluster words when teaching children the sounds of letters, this preference may reflect the adults’ own intuitive theory that singletons are structurally simpler than clusters. With regard to phonetic similarity, the results of Experiment 3 suggest that this factor influences children’s phoneme recognition performance in a limited way. In Experiment 3, as in Experiment 2, phonemes that differed from the target in voicing only were difficult to reject.

EXPERIMENT 4

Given that syllable structure appears to affect children’s performance in reading-related tasks, as the results of Experiment 3 suggest, one


might ask about its influence on reading. Is children’s ability to decode individual printed words affected by the items’ syllabic structures? In particular, do syllable-initial consonant clusters cause difficulty in reading, as they do in phonemic analysis? To explore this question, Experiment 4 compared children’s ability to decode CVC and CCV nonsense words. The pairs of CVC and CCV items were composed of the same letters; only the order of the letters (and consequently the syllabic structure) differed.

Method

Procedure. The child was shown a stack of index cards and was asked to read the “word” printed on each card. The child was told that the “words” were made-up and did not make sense, but to try to read each one as well as possible. The experimenter transcribed the child’s pronunciations phonetically. In the infrequent cases in which a child offered more than one pronunciation, the experimenter asked which one he or she considered best and counted this as the child’s response. The session was tape-recorded so that the transcriptions could later be rechecked. The order of the 20 cards was randomized for each subject.

Stimuli. Ten pairs of stimuli were constructed. Within each pair, one stimulus was pronounced as a CVC and the other was pronounced as a CCV. The stimuli in each pair were composed of the same letters, with only the position of the second consonant differing. Sample pairs are KEER, KREE; SOOM, SMOO; and SAN, SNA. For eight pairs the vowel was represented with two letters and for two pairs it was represented with a single letter. Each stimulus was printed on an index card using uppercase letters.

Subjects. Twenty first graders (mean age 6,lO; range 6,3-7,6) and 20 second graders (mean age 7,11; range 7,4-8,4) participated.


Children’s pronunciations were scored in two ways. According to the strict scoring, all phonemes in the word, including the vowel, had to be pronounced correctly following the major correspondence patterns listed by Venezky (1970). The pronunciation of A as either /se/ or /a/ was counted as correct. According to the lenient scoring, the vowel did not have to be pronounced correctly. This system was included because previous studies (Fowler, Liberman & Schankweiler, 1977; Fowler, Shankweiler, & Liberman, 1979; Shankweiler & Liberman, 1972) have shown that vowels are misread more often than consonants, in part because their pronunciations are determined to a large degree by their orthographic contexts. Indeed, as Table 6 shows, many responses that were not correct by the strict scoring were correct under the lenient system. The results from each of the scoring systems were submitted to

176 REBECCA TREIMAN

TABLE 6 MEAN NUMBER CORRECT IN EXPERIMENT 4 AS A FUNCTION OF ITEM TYPE, SCORING SYSTEM,

AND AGE

First graders (n = 20) Second graders (n = 20)

Strict scoring (vowel must be correct)

CVC items CCV items

Lenient scoring (vowel need not be correct)

CVC items CCV items

3.95 7.10 2.60 7.15

6.45 8.95 4.00 8.35

Note. Maximum score per cell = 10.

analyses of variance for a 2 (subject group) x 2 (item type) repeated measures design. The analysis based on the strict scoring system yielded a main effect of subject group (F(1, 38) = 29.10, p < .OOOl), showing that second graders correctly read more items than first graders. A main effect of item type also emerged (F(1, 38) = 11.29, p < .002). As hypothesized, children performed better on CVC items than on CCV items. Although the difference between the two types of items appeared to be smaller for the second graders than for the first graders, the interaction was not significant (F(1, 38) = 2.00, p > .15). Tests across stimuli were carried out separately for the two grade levels. The difference between CVCs and CCVs was significant for the first graders considered alone (r(9) = 1.96, p < .05, one tailed) but not for the second graders (r(9) = .96). The analysis based on the lenient scoring system also yielded main effects of subject group (F(1, 38) = 20.51, p < .OOOl) and item type (F(1, 38) = 17.70, p < .0002). In this analysis, the interaction between group and item type was reliable (F(1, 38) = 6.51, p < .Ol). Post hoc analyses showed that the first graders did significantly better on CVCs than CCVs (Tukey’s, p < .Ol) whereas the second graders did not (Tukey’s, p > .05). Tests across stimuli for the lenient scoring system also showed a significant decrement on CCVs relative to CVCs for first graders (r(9) = 4.00, p < .002, one tailed) but not for second graders (t(9) = 1.23).

Thus, the results of Experiment 4 reveal a difficulty on CCV items that is particularly marked for first graders. At this grade level, the poorer performance on CCV items relative to matched CVC items was significant both when analyzed across subjects and across stimuli, for both the strict and the lenient scoring systems. Second graders correctly decoded CCVs and CVCs better than first graders. The difference between item types appeared to be diminished for this group, and was not significant in tests across stimuli.


Analyses of children’s misreadings revealed two major differences between errors on CCV items and errors on CVC items. (In these analyses, errors will be defined according to the strict scoring system.) As might be expected from the above discussion, these differences were particularly marked for first graders. The first major difference was that first graders tended to misread CCVs as beginning with singletons more often than they misread CVCs as beginning with clusters (t(l8) = 3.13, p < .003, two tailed; one subject was excluded from this analysis because this subject made no errors on CVCs). Sixty-seven percent or significantly more than half k’(l) = 16.89, p < .OOl, two tailed) of first graders’ errors on CCVs began with singletons, whereas only 31% or significantly less than half (x2(1) = 17.63, p < .OOl, two tailed) of their errors on CVCs began with clusters. At the second-grade level, the corresponding figures were 46 and 35%. These values differed significantly from one another (t(13) = 2.47, p < .04, two tailed; six subjects were excluded because they made no errors on one or both types of items). Further evidence of first graders’ tendency to transform consonant clusters into singletons was that 15% of their errors on CCV syllables contained all three of the correct phonemes but had the order of the second and third phonemes reversed. A sample error of this type is /sum/ for SMOO. The percentage of errors on CVC syllables that involved the reversal of the second and third phonemes (e.g., /smu/ for SOOM) was significantly lower, at 3% (t(l8) = 2.62, p < .02, two tailed). For second graders, an equal percentage of errors on both types of items (12%) involved such a reversal (for the difference t(13) = 1. IO).

A second major difference between errors on CCV and CVC items was that subjects were more likely to misread CCVs with more than one syllable. For first graders, 20% of errors on CCVs had more than one syllable (typically two syllables). In comparison, 12% of errors on CVCs had more than one syllable. For second graders, the figures were 18 and 5%, respectively. The difference was statistically significant when tested across all subjects at the two grade levels (t(32) = 2.39, p < .05, two tailed). Most (72%) of the multisyllabic responses to CCV items retained both consonants of the stimulus and inserted a V (or occasionally a VC) between them. For example, SMOO was misread as /so-mo/ or SNA as /sa-na/. The inserted unit generally served to place the second consonant of the cluster at the beginning of the second syllable in the child’s pronunciation. These errors did not seem to refIect a failure in “blending,” as if children pronounced the first consonant of the stimulus separately, followed by the remainder. Had this strategy been common, one would have expected many errors such as /so-na/ for SNA, in which /a/ or /A/ was inserted. In fact, such errors were infrequent (7% of cases): the inserted unit was not usually a neutral vowel.

178 REBECCA TREIMAN

In summary, Experiment 4 found that beginning readers, particularly first graders, had more difficulty decoding CCV syllables than CVC syllables. Their errors on syllables beginning with consonant clusters tended to transform the clusters into singleton consonants.

GENERAL DISCUSSION

The present results are of interest for two main reasons. First, they provide evidence that the phonemes in a syllable are grouped into onset and rime constituents, rather than arranged as a simple string. As stated in the introduction, most behavioral evidence to support theories of syllable structure comes from adults. The results reported here provide converging evidence from children. Thus, Experiment 1 found that %year-olds more easily substituted two phonemes for the final VC of a CVC syllable than for the initial CV. This result is consistent with the hypothesis that the rime is a natural consitituent of the syllable whereas the initial CV is not. With CCV syllables, in contrast, substitution of the initial CC or onset proved easier than substitution of the final CV. The results of Experiment 1 are comparable to results of studies with adult subjects. In these studies, word games involving natural constituents of the syllable were easier to learn than word games involving nonnatural constituents (Treiman, 1983). Experiments 2 and 3 provided further evidence that the onset of the syllable is a cohesive unit. In these experiments, 4- and 5- year-olds had more difficulty recognizing a target consonant when that consonant was the first phoneme of a cluster than when it was a singleton. Apparently, they more readily analyzed a CCV syllable as CC plus V than as C plus CV. These results are comparable to findings that adult subjects take longer to recognize a target phoneme in a cluster than in a singleton (Treiman et al., 1982). The results with children are of particular interest in light of the view (Treiman & Baron, 1981; Treiman & Breaux, 1982) that young children perceive spoken syllables as undifferentiated wholes. The present results do not support a strong version of this hypothesis since they suggest that, at least by 5 years or so, tasks that require the analysis of syllables into onsets and rimes are easier than tasks that require the analysis of syllables into other units. Even for children, certain ways of subdividing a syllable may be more natural than others.

In addition to providing evidence that spoken syllables are composed of onset and rime units, the present results have implications for the development of phonemic analysis and decoding skills. Previous research has suggested that, although the process of speech production may involve the same hierarchy of levels for children as for adults (see MacKay, 1982), conscious attention to higher levels of the hierarchy may be easier than attention to lower levels of the hierarchy (Rozin & Gleitman, 1977). Consistent with this view, several studies (e.g., Liberman et al., 1974;


Treiman & Baron, 1981) have found that the ability to explicitly analyze speech into syllables developmentally precedes the ability to analyze speech into phonemes. These previous studies have not, however, considered the possibility that there are one or more levels intermediate between syllables and phonemes. In particular, there may exist a level at which syllables are represented as onsets and rimes, as in MacKay’s (1982) model. Following the reasoning used in previous studies of phonemic awareness, the ability to analyze syllables into onsets and rimes should developmentally precede the ability to analyze onsets and rimes into phonemes. Phonemic analysis tasks that can be solved on the basis of an onset/rime analysis should be easier, according to this hypothesis, than phonemic analysis tasks that require onsets and rimes to be subdivided. The results of Experiments l-3 are consistent with this developmental claim.

The present findings support the notion (Gough & Hillinger, 1980; Liberman, 1982; Rozin & Gleitman, 1977; Treiman & Baron, 1983) that phonemic awareness is important in learning to decode printed words. They do so by suggesting a specific link between phonemic awareness and decoding. In phonemic analysis tasks with spoken stimuli, syllable- initial consonant clusters appear to behave as units. Children find it difficult to analyze them into their constituent phonemes. In decoding of print, syllable-initial clusters also cause trouble, as the results of Experiment 4 reveal. While children’s difficulty on CCV as compared to CVC stimuli in Experiment 4 could be explained in alternative ways- for example, as a result of lesser experience with or instruction on consonant clusters-1 propose that children have trouble decoding printed consonant clusters because they have difficulty analyzing clusters in spoken words. Recent studies of first graders’ spellings (Treiman, 1985) suggest that difficulty in analyzing syllable-initial consonant clusters man- ifests itself in spelling as well, in a tendency to spell such clusters with one rather than two letters. Particularly common, in my corpus, are errors in which children omit the second letters of syllable-initial clusters. Examples include BO for “blow” and HASAK for “haystack.” In contrast, children rarely delete L or T when they are in syllable-initial position. Children may spell a cluster such as “bl” with the single letter B because they conceptualize it as a single unit.

Further investigations of syllable structure, reading, and spelling should reveal additional ways in which children’s awareness of the structure of spoken syllables affects their ability to read and spell those syllables. One interesting question concerns children’s treatment of syllable-final clusters, a topic not addressed by this research. Previous studies with adults (Treiman, 1984), have shown that final consonant clusters are treated differently depending on whether they begin with liquids (“1,” “r”), nasals (e.g., “m, ” “n”), or obstruents (e.g., “f,” “d,” “k”).

180 REBECCA TREIMAN

Liquids and to a lesser extent nasals are closely linked with the vowel; obstruents are linked with the final consonant. Further research is needed to determine whether this factor of phoneme category influences children’s ability to analyze, read, and spell syllables containing final consonant clusters.

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RECEIVED: August 15, 1983; REVISED: January 25, 1984, May 15, 1984.

Onsets and rimes as units of spoken syllables: Evidence from children

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Transcript of Onsets and rimes as units of spoken syllables: Evidence from children