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Spelling and Reading Words in Bengali: The Role of Distributed Phonology

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Handbook of Literacy in Akshara Orthography

Part of the book series: Literacy Studies ((LITS,volume 17))

Abstract

Bengali orthography is only moderately transparent, and there are several striking instances of phonology-orthography and orthography-phonology inconsistency. In this chapter, we show that an index of advancing skills in Bengali word reading and spelling is knowledge of word level phonology. In particular, we show that in the early grades, an important task is to learn to read and spell words where phonological information is distributed across the word, neutralized or elided. While phonological neutralizations impact spelling more than reading, some forms of phonology-akshara mapping and non-linear arrangements in complex akshara impact both reading and spelling.

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Notes

  1. 1.

    Bengali words are transcribed first as they are represented in orthography using ITRANS, followed by the phonetic transcription in IPA, and gloss. The inherent vowel of Bengali akshara pronounced as /É”/ or /o/ is denoted by [a].

  2. 2.

    The nonword reading task has no item with geminates, therefore comparative scores on spelling and reading task are unavailable.

  3. 3.

    In Sircar and Nag (2014) we showed that CVCaCV nonwords, such as DoTaka that could be read as /dɔtka/ or /dɔtoka/, are read as /dɔtka/ like a real word /pɔtka/ ‘firecracker’: More skilled children often rely on lexical and phonotactic information rather than akshara-phonology mapping rules.

  4. 4.

    Hawu shows a form of vowel metathesis which is more of a phonotactic repair strategy or a speech lapse.

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Acknowledgements

This study was funded by a Seed Grant from The Promise Foundation to the first author and supported by Sarva Shiksha Abhiyan, Kolkata. We thank the Principals, teachers and children of the five participating children and their teachers, and the research assistants: Syed Saurov, Madhurima Chatterjee, Sulagna Ganguly, Jayeeta Mazumdar, and Dipannita Chakraborty for data collection and data coding.

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Authors and Affiliations

  1. Department of Linguistics & Contemporary English, School of Language Sciences, English and Foreign Languages University, Hyderabad, Telangana, India

    Shruti Sircar

  2. Department of Education, University of Oxford, Oxford, UK

    Sonali Nag

  3. The Promise Foundation, Bangalore, India

    Sonali Nag

Authors
  1. Shruti Sircar
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  2. Sonali Nag
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Correspondence to Shruti Sircar or Sonali Nag .

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Editors and Affiliations

  1. Department of Teaching, Learning, and Culture, College of Education and Human Development, Texas A&M University, College Station, TX, USA

    R. Malatesha Joshi

  2. Department of Psychology, The Chinese University of Hong Kong, Hong Kong, China

    Catherine McBride

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Sircar, S., Nag, S. (2019). Spelling and Reading Words in Bengali: The Role of Distributed Phonology. In: Joshi, R.M., McBride, C. (eds) Handbook of Literacy in Akshara Orthography. Literacy Studies, vol 17. Springer, Cham. https://doi.org/10.1007/978-3-030-05977-4_9

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  • DOI: https://doi.org/10.1007/978-3-030-05977-4_9

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