The Specificity of the Orthography-Phonology Interface

• Applicant: Professorin Dr. Nivedita Mani
• Subject Area: General and Comparative Linguistics, Experimental Linguistics, Typology, Non-European Languages
• Term: from 2013 to 2015
• Project identifier: Deutsche Forschungsgemeinschaft (DFG) - Project number 235364987

For many people, contact with language is bi-modal, i.e., they can produce and comprehend both spoken and written language. Therefore, representations of words often consist of both visual (i.e., the letters) and auditory forms (i.e., the sounds) of the same words. The current proposal examines the manner in which processing language in one modality co-activates the other, i.e., the manner in which reading co-activates the spoken forms of the words we are reading, or speech co-activates the written forms of the words we hear. As a novel advance on current literature, the proposal delves beneath the lexical level to examine the amount of detail associated with co-activated phonological or orthographical representations. For instance, do phonological forms that are co-activated whilst reading contain specification of word stress or the phonological and articulatory features of words? Similarly, do orthographical forms that are co-activated whilst processing speech contain specification of sub-graphemic features, e.g., the features that make up the letter P. Overall, the aim of the proposal is a better, more specific understanding of the cognitive processes influencing our day-to-day reading and speech perception, with regard to both monolingual and bilingual speakers.

• DFG Programme: Research Grants