Running Head: AKSHARA-SYLLABLE MAPPINGS

Shruti Sircar

The English and Foreign Languages University, Hyderabad

shrutisircar@gmail.com

Sonali Nag

The Promise Foundation, Bangalore

and University of York, UK

sonalinag@t-p-f.org

AKSHARA-SYLLABLE MAPPINGS IN BENGALI: A LANGUAGE-SPECIFIC SKILL

FOR READING

An updated version of this chapter will appear in

South and Southeast Asian

Psycholinguistics

Editors: Heather Winskel & Prakash Padakannaya

ABSTRACT:

In this chapter we discuss the nature of mapping between the akshara (an orthographic

syllable) and the phonological syllables in Bengali. We look at the relative difficulty in word

reading where akshara-syllable mismatches occur, and the ways in which akshara-syllable

mappings impact phonological processing. We present descriptive data from a survey of 57

typically developing children and 15 poor readers in Grades 3 and 4 and a group of 37

younger Grade 2 children. Childrens responses on word reading, syllable and phoneme

processing tasks indicate that different types of akshara-syllable mappings are read and

processed in a different way. These findings are one example of how specific properties of

the spoken language and the writing system interact and influence learning.

SHRUTI SIRCAR AND SONALI NAG

AKSHARA-SYLLABLE MAPPINGS IN BENGALI:

A LANGUAGE-SPECIFIC SKILL FOR READING

1. WRITING SYSTEMS

Writing systems differ in the phonological units they represent. In alphabetic scripts, the

basic unit represented by a grapheme is essentially a phoneme although the nature of this

correspondence can vary. In languages such as Finnish, every grapheme is realized by only

one phoneme and every phoneme represents one grapheme, making these transparent

orthographies. Conversely, in opaque orthographies, a phoneme can be realized by different

graphemes (e.g., compare /u:/ in to, too, two), and a grapheme by many different

phonemes (e.g., the letter [a] in late, above, cat, and car). In syllabic scripts such as

Cherokee written units represent syllables. In contrast, the symbols in alphasyllabic scripts

represent sounds at the level of syllable but can also be segmented into phonemes (Nag,

2011). In this chapter we examine how sound-symbol mappings influence ability to read and

process phonological units. As we will see, the unique properties of the Bengali writing

system make it particularly useful for examining this question.

2. PHONOLOGICAL AND ORTHOGRAPHIC STRUCTURE OF BENGALI

Bengali has seven oral vowels (/i/ /u/, /e/, /o/, //, // /a/), four semi-vowels (/j/, /w/, /e/, /o/),

and thirty consonants (Ray, Hai, & Ray, 1966). Many diphthongs are possible and necessarily

consist of one semi vowel, though only two diphthongal akshara /oi/ and /ou/ are represented

in the symbol register. All vowels can be nasalized. Vowel deletion (like schwa deletion) is

common in the language, particularly in word medial and final positions. This phenomenon

is variously governed by word etymology, phonotactic constraints and morphological

compositions, many of which are not obvious to a beginning reader.

Bengali has 16 canonical syllable patterns (Sarkar, 1986), which in descending order of

frequency are CV, CVC, V, VC, VV, CVV, CCV, CCVC, CVVC, CCVV, CCVVC,

CVCCV, CCCV, CCCVC, VVC and CCCVV. The CV syllables constitute 54% of the whole

language (Dan, 1992), while CCCV, CCCVC and CCCVV are infrequent. Consonant clusters

occur in onset but not coda positions, unless they are in loan words (e.g., English /pnts/) or

Urdu /got/ meat). Bengali allows a large set of consonant clusters in word medial positions,

particularly in mono-morphemic words.

The Bengali script, like all other Indic scripts, originated from the ancient Brahmi . The

fundamental organizing principle of the script is the (orthographic) syllable. An orthographic

syllable akshara consists of a consonantal core, with the vowel arranged around the

core. The akshara represent /Ca/, /CV/ and /CCV/ syllables ( Nag, 2011). Vowels and

consonants have a primary and a secondary form:the representation by either is rule based,

thereby making this aspect of the Bengali akshara system consistent. Elsewhere in the symbol

set, the coming together of consonants can result in a new akshara where the component

segments are either visually recognisable (+=, ka + ka = kka) or a fused form, with little

scope for applying rule-based combinatorial principles to construct the akshara from each

primary form (+= , ka+ta=kta). Any application of the construct of consistency needs

to account for such intra-orthography variations. Further, the alphabet focused definition of

consistency (e.g., Frost, Katz, & Bentin, 1987) as 1:1 mappings is also limited and does not

cover the 1:2 representations of the akshara system (Nag, Treiman, & Snowling, 2010).

The Bengali orthography is moderately transparent. The vast majority of CV akshara map to

their corresponding spoken CV syllables (thus a 1:1 mapping of orthographic syllable and

phonological syllable) except in the following cases: (a) The vowel [e] is pronounced as

both /e/ and // (for e.g., ekA1 /ka:/ alone or bega /beg/ velocity). (b) Consonant clusters

are often pronounced as geminates irrespective of the second consonant (e.g., satYa /sotto/

truth, padmA /pdda:/ lotus.) (c) The Bengali script has two symbols each to represent the

vowel sounds /i/ and /u/, and more than one grapheme for the consonant sounds //, /d/, and

/n/. In addition, inconsistency arises when /Ca/ akshara in word medial and final positions

have vowel deletion2 (e.g., the ra in darabAra /drba:r/ court; and ka nAka

1 Bengali graphemes have been represented here using ITRANS and the pronunciations are written in IPA..2

The inherent vowel of Bengali akshara is pronounced as // or /o/ but easy reference we shall denote it as [a].

/na:k/, more examples in Box 1). But also confusingly, orthographic representations of

intervocalic consonants may be as two full consonants (/Ca-CV/ akshara sequences) or as a

ligatured half symbol (a /CCV/ akshara). Taken together, there are two implications for the

young learner: the written language has rules about akshara sequences specific to particular

words (graphotactic rules), and there are several instances of inconsistency. We now turn to

the results of a survey of primary school children to examine the phonological processes that

underpin learning to read in the Bengali alphasyllabary, with a special focus on the mappings

between the orthographic syllable and the phonological syllable (akshara-syllable mappings).

3. THE SURVEY

Our survey was conducted in five schools in Kolkata (India) and we present descriptive data

of 109 seven to ten year old children.. Children were chosen as typically developing for

Grade 2, Grades 3-43 , and as poor readers for Grade 3-4 on the basis of a screening battery

comprising tests of initial phoneme identification, word reading in context, and reading

comprehension. Bengali was the home and neighbourhood language for all children. From

Grades 3-4, the typically developing readers were 57 (TD-G3), with the 15 children with the

lowest 15% scores on the screening battery in a poor readers group (PR). We also report

profiles of 37 typically developing children in Grade 2 (TD-G2).

We assessed, among others, akshara knowledge and reading accuracy on words and

nonwords based on items chosen for their /Ca/, /CV/, and /CCV/ characteristics. In addition,

following our interest in akshara-syllable mapping, we assessed phonological processing.

3 Grades 3 and 4 showed substantial overlap in attainments. On reading accuracy Grades 3 and 4 had the samemedian. Hence we have chosen to not break up the analyses by Grade for these children.

Children manipulated target syllables and phonemes in nonwords, in either initial or final

positions.

4. AKSHARA KNOWLEDGE AND WORD RECOGNITION

Research in other akshara languages like Kannada and Malayalam has shown us that learning

of the akshara, particularly the complex, later taught and less frequently encountered akshara,

take time (Nag, 2003; Tiwari, Nair & Krishnan, in press). On a Bengali akshara recognition

task we found a similarly extended acquisition phase, some akshara were still not learnt by

Grade 4. Most errors were on the akshara for consonant clusters. Among the /CCV/ akshara

on the list, while the Mean success rate for the typically developing Grade 3-4 children was at

70.2%, for Grade 2 children and the poor readers, accuracy was 60.5% and 54.6%. Both the

later groups struggled to give a blended response for consonant clusters, tending instead to

spell' out each sound segment of the akshara. Clusters like [pra] that can occur word

initially and medially and are frequent were recognised more accurately than less frequent

clusters like [nta] that occur only word medially. Aside from the complex akshara

however, children in our survey demonstrated mastery of a large number of akshara. This

profile of mastery is perhaps reflective of the methods of akshara instruction in the schools in

our survey. The participating schools followed a phase-wise scheme, teaching /Ca/ first and

/CV/ and /CCV/ akshara later. Akshara instruction focused on helping children pull apart

akshara to see its components the base consonant and the vowel signs (Kishalaya 1 & 2,

2004). The gains of such explicit teaching of phonemic markers within akshara appear to

have moved the children into using combinatorial rules, and to rapidly gain mastery on

recurrent features that are applicable to most akshara. Examples of recurrent features would

be the predictable use of the primary or secondary form of a phoneme and the predictable

position of the vowel form in CV akshara irrespective of the base consonant. In Nags Model

of Akshara Learning (2011), the children could be said to have moved to a strategic approach

to akshara recognition. Thus, while the less familiar symbols appeared to elicit segmental

analysis of the markers within the syllable block (the spelling of the akshara), the

familiarity of the common akshara perhaps allowed for the symbols to be reliably processed

as an undifferentiated block.

On the reading task, accuracy on words was unaffected by akshara complexity and variable

akshara-syllable mapping except for words with inconsistency of /CVCoCV/ spoken words

written as /CVCaCV/ akshara sequences4 . Our word list contained frequently encountered

/CVCoCV/ - /CVCaCV/ contrasted words. Eight percent of Grade 2 children but none of the

poor readers misread such words (see Box 1). For the older children, practice may have

bootstrapped recognition: children knew when to read an akshara with or without the inherent

vowel [a]. Should the children have encountered unfamiliar and infrequent words, the

inconsistent akshara-syllable mapping would have impacted their reading accuracy, a

hypothesis we confirm through an analysis of errors on the nonword reading task.

All groups taken together, 6% of errors in nonword reading were lexical (e.g., a nonword

pram was read as words prem love or as pratham first). But 94% of errors that children

made were phonological where consonants in the /CCV/ akshara were reversed in reading

(rognA /rgna:/ became rongA /rga:/) or gemminated (rogga) . But the more interesting

interactions were seen between lexical knowledge and decoding when akshara-syllable

mappings were ambiguous (see Table 1, Panel B for examples).

4 For representation of word medial sequences, the written form of CC (orthographic syllables) is italicized andpresented as /CVCaCV). The corresponding spoken form (phonological syllables) when carrying a voweldeletion is represented as /CVCoCV/.

Recall that, given the arbitrary nature of mappings in word medial position, /CVCaCV/

nonwords can be read with or without the inherent vowel. Three nonwords [DoTakA, kuTalo,

piraShA] were analysed for the nature of phonological analogies used for decoding. Older

and more proficient readers read DoTakA and kuTalo without the inherent vowel [a] (as

/dtk:a/ and /kutlo/) analogous to early acquired, familiar words maTka pot, paTka

firecrackers and jhaTka a bolt ; but read piraShA always with the inherent vowel (as

/piroa:/) like DhAronA assumption, preronA inspiration and ShironAm title). Many

younger children (36%) and poor readers (33%), did not use these analogies, and read the

medial akshara of DoTakA and kuTalo by sounding out the inherent vowel [a]. These trends

in nonword reading reveal for us the possible decoding strategy that may be employed for

identifying unfamiliar words with similar opacity within the medial akshara-syllable

mappings. While it is not unexpected that inconsistencies in akshara-syllable mappings will

be difficult for younger readers and poor readers, our analysis gives us clues of why these

difficulties occur. Less skilled readers appear to be faithful, perhaps overly so, to

orthographic information. They may not productively use phonological analogies for

generalisations nor actively draw upon them during learning.

5 PHONOLOGICAL PROCESSING

The complexity of the syllable unit has been shown to be a factor influencing phonological

processing (e.g. Nag, 2007). In this section, we examine childrens processing of simple and

complex syllables for segmentation, deletion and substitution. Childrens responses are given

in Figure 1. First, in keeping with universal trends, we found phoneme processing to be

lower compared to syllable processing, with increases in phonemic processing as children

gained in decoding accuracy. Second, in syllable tasks, the complexity of the syllable appears

to have some affect on performance (Figure 1, Panel A). On the phoneme tasks, the

complexity effects are more evident. Manipulation of word initial phonemes in CVC

syllables was easier than CCVC syllables for all Grade levels and among poor readers (Figure

1, Panel B). Third, we found the phoneme processing in poor readers to be lower than Grade

3-4 children, but similar to Grade 2 children, suggestive of a delay in the development of

phonemic awareness (Panel B).

5.1 Syllable processing and akshara-syllable mappings

On a segmentation task, all children had 95% accuracy on nonwords with CV and CVC

syllables, with errors among some younger children and poor readers located around longer

nonwords. But more than the attainments in syllable processing, we were interested in

examining individual akshara-syllable mappings, and the segmentation of intervocalic

consonant clusters (CVCCV). Segmentation could be either as CVC-CV or CV-CCV. In

terms of mappings, the former would require an intra-akshara split, so that the first consonant

emerges as the coda of the first syllable, and the second as the onset of the second syllable.

In the latter the CCV akshara would become the onset of the second syllable. So, if

segmentation was phonological, the CVC-CV parse would be preferred, and if the

segmentation was mediated by orthography, the CV-CCV parse would be favoured. In our

survey, children overwhelmingly preferred the CVC-CV parse. One interpretation of these

trends is that akshara-syllable mappings do not seem to interfere with the syllable

segmentation process. Looking further, we found that childrens preferences appeared to be

modulated by the phonotactic constraints of the language. In Standard Bengali, clusters with

sonorant + obstruent/sonorant sequences (e.g., /gn/, /bd/, /pt/, /kl/, /rm/, /rn/, /rp/, /rt/, /rg/,

/rd/, /np/, /nt/, /nd/ /mb/, /lm/, /lp/) occur only word medially, but an obstruent +

obstruent/sonorant cluster (e.g., /kr/, /kl/, /gr/, /gl/, /tr/, /dr/, /dhr/, /nr/, /pr/, /pl/, /br/, /bhr/, /mr/

and /ml/) occurs both word initially and medially (Kar, 2010). Childrens segmentation

showed a preference for the CVC-CV parse (above 85%) when the medial CC could not

occur as an onset cluster for the second syllable (e.g., kitnA, nubjA, chorti). However, when

the medial CC could occur as onset cluster for the following syllable (e.g., makrA, leddhi,

librA), the use of a CVC-CV parse dropped to around 50%. Children appeared to be using

their knowledge of phonotactic constraints of the language to guide syllable level processing.

On the substitution tasks, akshara-syllable mappings impacted performance, particularly

when the final syllable needed to be manipulated. Again our interest was in CVCCV

sequences and whether there was a phonological splitting of the second akshara or an akshara

by akshara manipulation (see Table 1, Panel B). We found that when asked to substitute the

first syllable of Tagno with [che], 75.1% of Grade 2, 85.6% of Grade 3-4 and 50.6 % of poor

readers substituted the CV [Ta] rather than the CVC [Tag]. The resultant nonword was

chegno, not cheno. Similarly, in a substitution task with the final syllables, 43.7 % of Grade

2 children, 63% of Grade 3-4, and 12% of poor readers chose to substitute the final CV rather

than CCV. That is, they substituted the last syllable of Shopti, so that the resultant nonword

was Shopno. Again, the preference was for a phonological manipulation rather than an

akshara by akshara manipulation. From this preliminary descriptive analysis, our findings

suggest that the type of akshara-syllable mapping appear to make a difference to certain

syllable manipulations.

5.2. Phoneme processing and akshara-syllable processing

We next examine two tasks requiring manipulation of target phonemes in CVC and CCVC

nonwords. On the CVC nonwords, segmentation accuracy of Grade 2 children was at 63.6%,

Grade 3-4 at 81.3%, and poor readers at 55.3%. On CCVC nonwords, accuracy rates were

49.6%, 71.2% and 45.5% respectively. The trends suggest greater ease with phonemic

manipulations on the simpler CV syllable than the complex CCVC syllable. Also, in contrast

to the roughly equivalent performance across grades on syllable processing tasks, we found a

step-wise pattern on the phoneme tasks (Figure 1).

Looking further, two types of segmentation errors on CCVC nonwords stood out for their

possible association with the characteristics of the writing system. First, more than 35% of

children in Grades 2 and Grade 3-4 and 45% of poor readers segmented CCVCs like

/brl/ into ba + ra + la and not b + r + a + l. Rather than phonemic segmental units,

children appeared to represent the inherent vowel [a] in their segmentation (corresponding to

the /Ca/ akshara in the writing system). Moeover, vowels with orthographic arrangements

misaligned to the spoken syllable interfered with the segmentation sequence. For example,

12% of Grade 2 children (but none of the Grade 3-4 children) segmented /pek/ as /e/, /p/

and /k/, arguably because the vowel diacritic for /e/ orthographically precedes /p/ .

Importantly, the poor readers group in our survey did not make such errors, suggesting that

the influence of the visuo-spatial arrangements of the Bengali akshara on phonological

processing is not straightfoward. Other evidence of akshara-syllable mappings being a factor

in developing phonemic skills comes from the initial phoneme deletion task (deletion of /t/

from /teb/ and /p/ from /pre/). Among CVCs, 51.5% of Grade 2 children, 75.08% Grade3-

4 and 66.6% of poor readers could delete the initial phoneme. The accuracy rates dropped for

CCVCs, to 37.5%, 58.95% and 36% respectively. Grade 2 children deleted the whole initial

akshara (Ca; CV) in 22% of all instances of inaccurate segmentation, while such errors were

less than 10% in Grade 3-4 and poor readers (see Table 1, Panel C). In CCVC words, the

frequent error types were deleting either the whole CCV akshara or CC segment, and

accurate dropping of the C phoneme, but with downstream change through vowel reduction.

The first error was more common in Grade 2, while older learners more often deleted CC

segments (Figure 2). The third error type of vowel reduction is particularly interesting, where

the vowel is substituted with the inherent vowel; thus the deletion of the initial consonant in

preCh /pret/ becomes /rt/ rather than /ret/. It is plausible to consider this error type as a

/CCV/ manipulation reverting to a /Ca/ akshara-syllable mapping rather than the more

accurate /CV/ response.

6. CONCLUSION

In this chapter we have given a descriptive analysis of the nature of associations between the

orthographic syllable (the akshara) and the phonological syllable. We have looked at the

relative difficulty in decoding when akshara-syllable mismatches appear and the ways in

which akshara-syllable mappings differentially impact syllable and phoneme processing. The

patterns in childrens responses give us indications of what the key functional units in the

processing of the Bengali writing system may be. This is a useful first step for setting up

experiments to study specific cognitive processes when akshara-syllable mappings differ, and

for a theoretical account of the role of orthographic and sub-lexical processing in Bengali

reading. We began this chapter with the thesis that linguistic and orthographic diversity

serves as a natural laboratory for identifying the interactions between language-specific

properties and the written form. The skills that surround learning about akshara-syllable

mappings, we think, is a good example of such unique interactions.

Box 1: Sample of reading errors associated with akshara-syllable mismatch

1. Bengali:

Pronunciation /pikniker/ / hurir/ /pa: e/

Childs reading: /pikniker/ / hurir/ /pa: e/

beside the picnic basket

2. Bengali:

Pronunciation: /ma:tite/ /pa:/ /thukte/ /thukte/

Childs reading: /ma:tite/ /pa:/ /thukte/ /thukte/

stamping his feet on the floor

Error analysis

/pikniker/ /pikniker/

/ thukte/ /thukte/ (error with akshara-syllable mapping in medial /Ca/ akshara)

boy, 7;10 years, Grade 2

Table 1: Examples of childrens responses on nonword reading, syllable substitution and

phoneme segmentation tasks

Panel A: nonword reading

(girl, 7;4 years, Grade 2)

Item Childs response

Orthographic representation Phonetic representation

kefa /kef/

kuTalo /kutlo/

piraShA /poria:/

lerA /lora:/

hokula /holuk/

tipno /tipon/

Telpi /tepli/

Panel B: syllable substitution

(girl, 7;7 years, Grade 2)

Item Position; unit of manipulation Childs response

/ta:gno/ Initial; /te/ /tegno/

/gokti/ Initial; /da:/ /da:kti/

/pti/ Final; /no/ /pno/

/binda:/ Final; /t/ /bincho/

Panel C: phoneme segmentation

(girl, 7;1 years, Grade 2; boy, 9;2 years, Grade 4 )

Item Childs response

(Grade 2)

Childs response

(Grade 4)

/kha:s/ /kha:/ + /s/ + /kha:/ + /a:/ + /s/ + +

/pek/ /pe/+ /k/ + /pe/ + /e/ +/k/ + +

/gla:t/ /gla:/ + /t/ + /g/ + /la:/ + /t/ + +

/brl/ /br/ + /l/ + //br/ + /r/ + /l/ + +

Figure 1. Childrens success rate in syllable processing (Panel A) and phoneme processing

(Panel B) on simple and complex syllables

Figure 2. Phoneme deletion errors in CCVC nonwords

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ACKNOWLEDGEMENTS

This survey was funded by The Promise Foundation, Bangalore. We thank Paschim Banga

Sarva Shiksha Mission, Kolkata, for giving us permission to conduct the survey; the research

assistants for data collection and coding; and the children who participated in the study.