To what extent do orthographic units in print mirror phonological units in speech?

Abstract

Three experiments were performed to examine the degree to which the orthographic units in printed syllables reflect the phonological units in speech. Two of the experiments used a pronunciation decision task in which subjects had to determine whether a non-word sounded like a real word when pronounced. The third experiment used a lexical decision task. In all three experiments, evidence was obtained for orthographic units that correspond to onsets and rimes. The evidence was equivocal on whether the phonological category of the consonant that follows the vowel affects the internal structure of the orthographic rime as it does the structure of the phonological rime. The results are discussed in terms of the role of linguistic units in the processing of print.