some psycholinguistic aspects of brÔu literacy problems

SOME PSYCHOLINGUISTIC ASPECTS OF BRGU LITERACY PROBLEMS*

Eugenia Johnston Summer Institute of Linguistics

The forty-one syllable nuclei of Br&, a Mon-Khmer language of South Viet Nam, are described and their symbolization in an orthography constructed by the author is presented. The orthography was tested for appropriateness in two ways-(1) primers were written and the teachability of the orthography to non-literate native speakers was assessed and p) native speakers literate in Vietna- mese were asked to spell B r ~ wordsusingcardboard letters. The spelling experiment tested five features of the orthography-the representation of (1) contrasts in vowel length, (2) the relationship of final to medial vowels, (4) offglides as complex or simple nuclei and (5) non-register onglides a s complex or simple. Results indicated that certain revisions in the proposed orthography are called for, particularly in the representation of tense-register vowels and non-register onglides.

BACKGROUND

Orthographies

Three major factors in establishing an orthography for a previously unwritten language are: (1) the native speaker’s reaction (phonemics) to the phonological elements (phonetics) of his language; (2) sociolinguistic pressure from a prestige language; and (3) the analyst’s own psycholinguistic feelings concerning orthographical symbols and conventions.

Phonemics vs. Phonetics

Sapir was one of the first to discuss the importance of an in- forment’s reactions to phonemic solutions proposed for his language (1949, pp. 47-48):

*The data for this article were collected from informants of the Brou language, a Mon- Khmer group of Viet Nam and Laos; from fellow literacy specialists; and from the available literature on the subject. The author worked in the Huong Hoa District of Quang Tri Province, South Viet Nam, where some 8,000 of the estimated 50,000 Brou were living a s war refugees.

15

16 LANGUAGE LEARNING, VOL. XVIII, NOS. 1 & 2

what the naive speaker hears is not phonetic elements but phonemes. . . .The difficulty [of teaching a native to read and wr i te his own language] . . . varies, of course, with the intelligence of the native and the intrinsic difficulty of his language, but it varies also with the “phonemic intuitiveness’’ of the teacher. . . .It is exceedingly difficult. . .to teach a native to take account of purely mechanical phonetic variations which have no phonetic reality for him. . . .The native realizes when what he is taught “clicks” with what his phonological intuitions have already taught him; but he is made uncomfortable when purely phonetic distinc- tions a re pointed out to him. . . .

In later work, Fries and Pike agreed with Sapir (1949, p. 50):

Evidence for the phonemic structure of a language is of two kinds: (1) phonetic and distributional data of the traditional kind; and (2) the observable reactions of native speakers as they attempt to write or analyze their own language or to speak a foreign language.

In practice various problems arise.

Vowel relationships

Relatwn of final vowel to medial vowel.-Does a monolingual native speaker equate a final vowel with its medial long counterpart, its medial short counterpart, o r neither? To ascertain which, one gives an informant contrasting word pairs, one containing the medial long counterpart of the vowel in question, and one containing the medial short counterpart. The informant is then asked whether a word ending in the vowel under investigation sounds more like the word with the medial long vowel or more like the word with the medial short vowel. If the informant does hear the final vowel related to one of the medial counterparts, the orthography should reflect this fact; i.e., the final vowel should be symbolized the same as the medial vowel it sounds like. If it is not, a reading obstacle wil l be present. Further, one cannot assume that the same intuitions about any one factor in a language will hold true for a parallel factor in another language of the same language group. In Katu of Viet Nam, another of the Mon-Khmer group, Costello (1967) found that the native speaker identified the final vowel with the medial short vowel. In the BrGu language, the reverse was true.

Relation among constituents of uowel glides. -What vowel does the monolingual native speaker consider basic to a given vowel glide? To determine which, the analyst assembles a list of words containing the basic vowels which are in the general range of the glide in question, contrasts them for the informant, and asks which

B R ~ U LITERACY PROBLEMS 17

one is most like a word with the glide under question. Marjorie Buck (1967) reports an example of this in the Amuzgo language of Mexico:

In Amuzgo [ei] was written as e because the analysts thought it to be an allophone of /e/, with [el following palatalized sounds, and [ei] non-palatalized. However, the Amuzgo would not accepte for both these sounds, so the letter? with an underline was used. This corresponded to use of the letter g with an underline to symbolize [ae] , and with the letters with an underline to symbolize [a] -both of which had been readily accepted. It was subse- quently discovered that rather than [el and [ed] being allophones of one phoneme, [ei] is an alternant of /i/. Hence, the sound is now being written as ei, and this is approvedby the Amuzgo.

Voicing us. voicelessness

Does the monolingual native speaker hear non-phonemic voicing? If not, will loan words from another language affect his intuitions in this area? Fries and Pike report an instance of this in the Mazateco language of Mexico (1949, p. 30):

Al l voiceless stops become voiced after nasals. If loans are ignored, one would be forced to conclude that [t] and [d] are sub- members (allophones) of a single phoneme /t/, and could both be written with the single symbol ‘t’. Yet certain facts make this conclusion dubious: one very frequent world-siento ‘one hundred’, a Spanish loan-and a few other rare loans have [t] afer nasals in the speech of some Mazateco monolinguals. For these speakers the loan words prevent or contradict the desired statement that stops all become voiced after nasals. No native word for ‘one hundred’ is now in use; all speakers of the language use the Spanish loan.

The following question therefore arises: Should one o r two loan words be considered strong enough to break the occurrences of native /t/ into two phonemes /t/ and /a/? The analyst might easily reply in the affirmative, were it not for a fact of a non- distributional kind: the monolingual natives referred to, as well as the bilinguals (as reported by Eunice V. Pike) find it easier to learn to read [nd] when it is written ‘nt’ than when it is written ‘nd’. This evidence we interpret as indicating that the monolingual speakers still react to the native [t] and the native [dj as compos- ing a single phonemic unit, just as if the loans with [nt] were not used by them at all.

Sociolinguistic Pressure from a Prestige Language

A UNESCO bulletin carries this comment on conformity to a prestige language (1953, pp. 60-62):

Where there are several major regional languages in one coun- try o r where more than one language has official status, it is of


value to have relative uniformity in the way in which they are written.

The conflicts which may be inherent in the desire to conform to this principle are well stated by Pike (1947, p. 208):

In forming a practical orthography, the investigator is con- stantly disturbed by a dilemma or series of dilemmas. He wishera to make his orthography scientifically adequate to get the best and fastest reeults in the teaching of reading; he wishes his alphabet to reflect the actual linguistic structure of the vernacular spoken by the people. But he wishes also to have an orthography which will not be offensive to the people in the region in which it is spoken o r to the national government of the area. He wishes it to be adapted to traditional alphabets of the region and at the same time to be easy to write and print. These two general types of principles, the phonemic and social ones, do not coincide. The investigator therefore is likely to find himself engaged in debate with people who wish to emphasize the one or the other without due regard for a fine balance between them.

An example of sociolinguistic pressure among the Cakchiquels of Guatemala is given by Fries and Pike (1949, p. 40):

/v/ non-phonemically unvoices at the ends of words, whereas Spanish initially distinguishes /v/ and /f/. Although loans with [ f ] seem to be highly restricted (possibly to a few names) in Cakchiquel, the bilinguals have strongly insisted upon using both ‘v’ and ‘f’ in preparing written material.

A decision like the above forces the primer maker to construct an additional lesson to introduce the different letter, together with additional drills. It also requires the readers to learn one more symbol. If there are many of these symbol conflicts in any one language, the literacy worker has some real problems to solve.

Teaching Methods and Materials

Some Basic Theory The mother tongue

It has been well established that it is easier for one to learn to read with comprehension if he learns to read and write his own mother tongue before he tr ies to learn to read and write a foreign language. See Laubach (1947, pp. 97-98); Nida (1949, p. 17); and UNESCO bulletin (1953, p. 47).

The importance of using the correct methods and materials

If we assume (1) that the literacy specialist has in his favor the odds for success in teaching preliterate people to read and


write just by being able to teach them to read and write in their own language, and (2) that he has devised a good phonemic alphabet, we may ask how crucial are his materials and methods? Wil l most of the people learn to read regardless of these? Many educators would answer emphatically that only a few persons of exceptional ability and/or high motivation wil l learn to read regardless of materials and method of presentation.

Goal of primer maker According to Gudschinsky (1967), the learner must be able to

equate visual symbols with oral symbols and must also be able to internalize signals which indicate breath grouping, normal speech rhythm, and intonation patterns.

Native intuition and analogy The requisites given heretofore are the same for any society,

literate o r preliterate, but materials for a preliterate society present more problems because the primer maker has to discover a wide range of psycholinguistic preferences on the part of his learn- ers. For example, how does a native speaker feel about vowel register and nasalization? What relationship does he feel exists among the immediate constituents of a consonant cluster? How does he relate unstressed pre-syllables to stressed main syllables? Answers to such questions as these are extremely important, for, if beginning readers are taught with materials which run counter to their intuitions, they will be greatly hindered in reading progress.

Basic approaches to primer construction During the 20th century there has been a sharp debate in Amer-

ica between advocates of the “look-and-say” method (the reader is taught to recognize words, never their component parts), and advocates of the phonetic approach (which in its extreme form con- centrates on sounding out each letter). Actually, there should never have been such a cleavage. It is not either/or; it is both/and. This fact is pointed out by Roger Brown (1958, pp. 57-81) and Sarah Gudschinsky (1957, pp. 2-3).

Specific Methods

Buildirg up from part to whole In languages which have a very low phoneme count (10-30 pho-

nemes) and uncomplicated CV patterns, this method works very


well. All possible syllable patterns are introduced to the reader at the start, using a meaningful picture where possible; the pupil can then read o r make any word in his language by putting the proper syllables together. (Laubach, 1947, pp. 94-95).

Breaking down f rom whole to part

The Laubach syllable method has not worked well in languages having many phonemes and/or complicated stress and syllable patterns, as in the Mon-Khmer group in Wet Nam, where some languages have 60-70 phonemes and a variety of word patterns. (See Phillips, Miller and Miller, n.d.; and Miller, 1966.) In these languages, the whole must be broken down into parts. Buck gives an example of this (1967):

Even though the Amuzgos learned to recognize certain isolated syllables, for exampe, ca, they did not recognize such syllables when they were not in isolation. . .in writing. the Amuzgos would often leave unstressed syllables out completely. Thus, cututi would be written ‘’ti”; tati also wouldbe written “ti”; rnatseicatsuu would be written “matseitsuu” or even “matsuzd’. Hence, it was not possible to build up from the syllable to the world. Instead, it was necessary to break down from the word tothe syllable, always iso- lating from a word only the stressed syllable, never the unstressed:

catuti tati ti ti

Taught in this way, over a period of time, the Amuzgos learned to recognize the components of their words, including the unstressed syllables.

It can be seen from this experience that the Amuzgo did not equate a stressed syllable with an unstressed one. To them there w a s no relation between the isolated and therefore fully-pronounced tu and the unstressed tu of catuti. Had the teachers not been alert, the readers might have struggled against this obstacle too long, become discouraged and stopped trying to learn.

Choosing the correct analogy f o r drills

When one builds up from part to whole as in the Laubach method, the method of choosing a correct analogy for drills is not important since possibilities a re limited in such a way that one builds syllable drills using one vowel in each of its different possible combinations with a preceding consonant. When each of these combinations has been drilled for each vowel, the second analogy can be made by building syllable drills using each consonant with its possible combinations with each vowel. That is, the shape of the first drills would be:


a a a 0 0 0 ba ca da bo co do

The shape of the next dril ls would be: ba ca da bo co do

Each of these sequences builds from top to bottom. When one breaks down from whole to part, there are various

possibilities for drill analogies, and one must choose the correct one according to the native speaker's intuitions to be successful in teaching reading and writing. Table 1 shows three different types of drill for introducing a new consonant cluster, C'Y, where all other letters o r combinations of letters have already been learned by the pupils. In these drills, Drill 1 builds vertically from top to bottom, Drill 2 first builds vertically from top to bottom and then from left to right horizontally, Drill 3 builds vertically from top to bottom, and Drill 4 builds first from left to right horizontally and then from top to bottom vertically. There is a definite progres- sion of focus in these four drills, designed to help the pupil build certain associations.

TABLE 1

ANALOGOUS SYLLABLE DRILLS FOR CONSONANT CLUSTERS

Native Speaker's Dr i l l 1 Dri l l 2 D r i l l 3 Dri l l 4 Intuitive Reaction

cra a o u cra cra cro cru za ra ro ru CYO pra p r o pru

dra dro dru

c ya a o u cra cra cro cru ca ca co cu cro cla clo clu

( 1) a cra cro cru C9-U

a cra cro cru CTU c m CWO cwu (2)

cra a o u cra cra cro cru a cra cro cru cro pra pro pru

dra dro dru ( 3)

C7-U

THE B R ~ U ORTHOGRAPHY

Launching Syllable nuclei

Mon-Khmer languages are notable for their high numbers of contrastive syllable nuclei. Even with the most rigorous phonemic analysis, it is necessary to write 41 nucleus patterns in BrGu.

22 LANGUAGE LEARNING, VOL. WID, NOS. 1 & 2

C ENTRA L Short Regular Glided

2 U’ U’O’

a O’U’ u’ii ~

0’

Each nucleus will be called a ‘vowel’ whether it is a single seg- ment or a sequence of segments. These Br6u vowels are as fol- lows :

Ten regular vowels.-Six of these, the high and mid (i, 2, uf, o’, U , 6) show contrastive lax voice register; the four low ones (e, a, 6 , 0) do not show register contrast.

Eleven short vowels.-Ten of these are short counterparts of the regular vowels. Only two show register: the counterpart of the high central vowel (a’), and that of the mid central vowel (0’); the other eight (i, 8 , 6 , a, 6, &, G, 6) show no register contrast. The eleventh short vowel is a deviant mid central vowel (3, without a regular counterpart and without register contrast.

Six tense-register vowels. -These high and mid vowels (I%, ei, o’u’, au’, du, ou) show tense voice register contrasting with the six high and mid lax-register vowels.

Ten offg1ides.-F‘ive of these high and mid offglides (ie, u’o’, uo, ia, ua) show lax voice register, and the other five (G, $a, z.&, u’a, Sa) show tense voice register.

Four ong1ides.-These four onglides (06, oa, 05, 00) do not show register contrast.

The symbols chosen were those which would conform as much as possible to the Vietnamese orthography, but would not use a confusing number of diacritics and/or digraphs. Vietnamese has fourteen vowels with six tones. Tables 2 and 3 show the Br6u and the Vietnamese vowels, respectively.

BACK Short Regular Glided

U uo

U

& d

8 ua

-

TABLE 2

ORTHOGRAPHICAL REPRESENTATION OF B R ~ U VOWEIS

HIGH LaX

Non- reg.

Tense

LaX

Non- reg.

Tense

MID

FRONT Short Remlar Glided

i ie

. i

- Zi iii

Z iu

, f?

ei Ea

LOW I e‘ e

ii au* I ou ba

BR6U LITERACY PROBLEMS 23

HIGH

FRONT CENTRAL BACK

Regular Glided Short Regular Glided Regular Glided

iz U’ u’o’ U U6

l a ^ 0’ I s 1 : a I 0

(Note ( I ) ie is also written ye^, zu, yu: ( 2 ) zfd i s also written ria; (3 ) uo is also written ua. ud , u e . )

Testing

The foregoing orthography was tested in primers and by a psycholinguistic test.

Testing in primers

Layout. -Words and phonemes were introduced in order of frequency of use. Words were built into sentences, beginning on page 1 of the first primer, and the sentences built into story sequences very shortly. This was a modification of the psychophonemic primer style developed by William C. Townsend, and described by Elaine M. Townsend (1948). There were sixteen books of 28 pages each, every fourth one being a review primer. There is tremendous psychological value in having several books: first of all because the learner does not become discouraged by being presented with a large bulk of material which he thinks he can never learn; and second, because each succeeding book becomes an incentive for mastering the one before it. Because there was an adverse reaction to meaningless syllable drills (i.e., whole pages of syllables), such drill was not included in the primers, but was done by the teacher on the blackboard or with flashcards. Punctuation and capitals were not introduced in the primers, but were taught as a part of the writing process. Sentence juncture was marked by end of line o r by end of half-line. In addition, a pre-primer was pre- pared for those who needed orientation to basic reading principles.

Results. -Literacy campaigns proved that the BrGu orthography was certainly teachable, but somewhat unwieldy. Further, the over- concentration on following a frequency sequence in primer layout sacrificed teaching the various vowel features-length, register, offglide and onglide-in proper focus and contrast. However, this


kind of teaching was done with length in the first three primers, and the pupils had no problem thereafter with length.

The feature of register should have been similarly focused on by teaching the six tense-register vowels in close sequence, each one being contrasted with its lax-register counterparts as it was introduced, and also with each previously-introduced tense-register vowel. Such teaching would have enabled the pupils to make regis- te r {a strongly-recognized concept for them) the uniting feature for this group of six digraphs and they would have internalized the di- verse symbols more easily. The same technique should have been applied to the five lax-register vowel offglides, the five tense- register offglides, and the four non-register onglides.

Testing by psycholinguistic experiment$

Test participants

This test required native speakers who were literate in a language other than their own, so that they had a knowledge of orthographical symbols but were not prejudiced by the current orthography of their own language.

Procedure

Each person was tested individually. The procedure was to have him make with cardboard letters any word which the examiner pronounced to him. Words were put in meaningful frames to be sure the subject knew the word the examiner wanted him to construct.

Results

Length.--It had been anticipated that the BrGu would indicate whether they considered the long vowel o r the short vowel to be basic, either by suggesting (1) that the one they considered non- basic be marked because it was of lesser importance or less common, o r (2) that the one they considered basic be marked to show its importance or dominance. However, no suggestion was forth- coming either voluntarily o r upon request. Shortness had been marked by an acute accent in the original primer series and had proved very teachable.

Relation of final vowels to medial vowels.-The BrGu related the final vowel to the medial long vowel. One stated that the final vowels were like the long medial vowels because the short ones could not be said by themselves.


Register.-The BrGu related the six tense-register vowels with the six 1%-register vowels, writing them with the same symbol. They describe the relation as a difference between 66heavy’y and “light”-the same terms they use to describe gong sounds. This is interesting in view of the fact that neither tone nor pitch is of significance in distinguishing register. It is also interesting that “heavy” is used to describe the tense register, while “light” is used for the lax register. This is contrary to an English speaker’s reactions, because the lax-register vowels are spoken with relaxed vocal cords, producing a deep, almost-muffled type of sound. The test students were at a loss as to how to represent the difference orthographically.

Onglides.-The test confirmed that the BrGu considered these twenty offglides as complex units, rather than simple, but Vietna- mese influence seemed to preclude their giving an unbiased sample of BrGu intuition as to how the complexity should be written. Each tried to make the symbols for the three Vietnamese offglides cover nine of the BrGu offglides and brought in, in desperation, the oa of Vietnamese [wa] for mid back tense glide Sa. When faced with the many contrasts, they did not know what to suggest for orthography. Actually, the symbols currently used have a fairly close correla- tion with the basic components of the offglides, and it is not likely that any major improvement in symbols could be discovered.

Non-register onglides. -These four onglides were shown to be considered as sample, not complex units, related to the basic vowel, since the BrGu generally chose single vowel symbols to represent them. Attempts to discover the nature of this relationship were fruitless.

General Conclusions Concerning Br5u Orthography

Validation of Original Analysis

Results validated the original analysis of the Br6u vowel system as being composed of 41 syllable nuclei which must be given orthographical symbols. Results also validated the analysis of voice register contrast among some of the syllable nuclei; of length contrast among other nuclei; and of some type of regular contrast in the four nuclei that have been designated as non-register onglides.

Proposed Revision of the Current Orthography

Some of the current symbols should be changed to reflect the native speaker’s intuitions about the nuclei they represent, particularly those which have been written as complex units, but which the Br6u have indicated they consider simple units.


MID LaX

Non- reg.

Tense

LOW

The six tense-register vowels. -These could be written as single letter plus diacritic, using the lax-register counterpart for the single letter and perhaps the grave accent for the diacritic to indicate the feature of register. Thus, '& might be changed to k ei to 8; o'u' to &; au' to 2; 8u to ;; and ou to 6. In Vietnamese the grave accent is used to indicate low falling tone and was the symbol chosen by one BrGu to indicate register.

The four mn-register onglides. -These could also be written as single letter plus diacritic, using the related vowel as the letter, and perhaps the tilde to indicate th,e common_ linking feature. Thus, oa might be changed to g; o& to 6; 0; to 5 ; and 00 to G.

Gain f o r kxmners. -The above-suggested changes would cut in half the number of digraphs which the student must learn, leaving only the ten offglides. Digraph would then come to represent offglide in the same way in which the acute accent represents shortness, the grave accent represents register, and the tilde represents onglide. The BrGu readers wil l still have a large number of symbols to internalize, but this meaningful grouping of the syllable nuclei, accompanied by purposeful sequencing of the groups in the primer, should lighten the over-all learning load tremendously because it will make maximum use of structural analogies. Table 4 shows the proposed revised BrGu vowel orthography:

.. e ia 0'

6 ii a - d

e^ ;a 2 k e c i a Z 0 ' 0 ' 0'

TABLE 4

A RESULT OF PSYCHOLINGUISTIC FINDINGS B R ~ U VOWEL ORTHOGRAPHY REVISION PROPOSED AS

HIGH LaX

Non- reg .

Tense

I FRONT I CENTRAL

Short Regular Glided Short Regular Glided

BACK

Short Regular Glided

U uo

U . ,. U ua

6 WI

c

0

0 & d

0 0 0

(Note: Before a f inaldec is ion i s made on this proposedrevision, further investigation w ~ l l have to b e done to determine whether the u s e of Viernarnese tonal d iacr i t ics to indicate vowel features other than cone might c a u s e any s p e c i f i c difficulty.)


REFERENCES

Brown, Roger. 1958. Words and Things. Illinois: The Free Press. Buck, Marjorie. 1967. Personal report. Costello, Nancy. 1967. Personal report. Fries, Charles C., and Pike, Kenneth L. 1949. “Co-existent Phonemic

Systems.” Language, 25: 29-50. Gudschinsky, Sarah C. 1967. Lectures given at a literacy workshop in Viet

Nam. Gudschinsky, Sarah C. 1957. Handbook of l i teracy . University of Oklahoma:

Summer Institute of Linguistics. Laubach, Frank C. 1947. Teaching the World to Read. New York: Friend-

ship Press. Mil ler , John D. 1966. “An Acoustical Study of B r h Vowels.” Master’s

thesis. The Ohio State University. To be published in Phonetica: Nida, Eugene A. 1949. “Approaching Reading through the Native Language.”

Language Learning, 2:l: 16-20. Phillips, Richard L.; Miller, John D.; and Miller, Carolyn. n.d. “The Br6u

Vowel System: Alternate Analyses.” Unpublished paper. Pike, Kenneth L. 1947. A Technique f o r ReducingLanguages to Writing;

Ann Arbor: The University of Michigan Press. Sapir, Edward. 1949. “The Psychological Reality of Phonemes.” Selected

Writings of Edward Sapir. Edited by David G. Mandelbaum. California: University of California Press.

Townsend, Elaine M. 1948. “Accelerating Literacy by Piecemeal Digestion of the Alphabet.” Language Learning, 1:3: 9-19.

UNESCO. 1953. The Use of Vernacular Languages in Education. Paris: United Nations Educational, Scientific and Cultural Organization.

some psycholinguistic aspects of brÔu literacy problems

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