This paper challenges from a practical point of view the idea that the phonemic principle is the most adequate or the optimal theoretical basis for devising a romanized alphabet for a language. In the past, romanization of languages, written or unwritten, have largely been based on the phonemic principle and have unnecessarily burdened the learner…

A cross-cultural study examined preschoolers' knowledge of elementary components of the writing system. Subjects were 41 Chinese and 44 American preschool students between the ages of 2 and 4. The students were presented with sets of cards depicting familiar objects, capitalized English letters, and Chinese characters and were asked to turn each…

EVA, a text processing tool designed to be self-contained and useful for a variety of languages, is described briefly, and its extensive coded character set is illustrated. Features, specifications, and database functions are noted. Its application in development of a Slovenian literary dictionary is also described. (MSE)

This paper describes a computerized system for tagging language corpora that accommodates the special conditions in Bulgarian language research (notably, lack of advanced technology and corresponding user knowledge). SUPERLINGUA has been developed in the DOS environment with consideration for these conditions. Information on product use, users,…

A previous study by Gibson et al. (1972) that investigated the effect of orthographic structure on letter search was replicated and extended in order to identify factors that might explain the apparent discrepancy between their results and those of comparable studies. Experiment one tested whether the discrepancy might be explained by difference…

The reversal errors in the printing of 51 first grade students were examined. These children were asked to print a series of reversible target figures (letters and numbers, such as 2-s, p-q, p-9, and b-d) that were presented alone and with their mirror-image counterparts. To control for the possibility that the mere presence of another figure…

Spelling, a basic component of information technology, has been investigated for its efficiency as a means of communication, with some researchers claiming that English spelling is close to ideal for really literate people to read fast and efficiently. Evidence about human abilities to obtain meaning from the printed word has come from studies of…