Laying a foundation for tone orthography research and decision-making:

• 발행기관: 훈민정음학회
• 저자명: David Roberts
• 간행물 정보: 『Scripta』Volume.7, 151~189쪽, 전체 39쪽
• 주제분류: 인문학 > 언어학
• 파일형태: PDF
• 발행일자: 2015.10.30

영문 초록

The standard orthography of Kabiye (Togo) does not mark tone. In such a context, how can a researcher adequately assess the degree of ambiguity in the written language and make a valid contribution to the debate about how tone might be incorporated in the second generation of language development? This article approaches that question, not from the perspective of phonological analysis which has tended to dominate the literature, but from the point of view of the linguistics of writing. Applying Catach’s (1984) model of lexical ambiguity to Kabiye, it advocates the development of a homograph corpus in which words, roots and affixes are included or excluded on the basis of semantic, morphological and dialectal criteria. A homographic prefix with pronominal, negative and immediative interpretations illustrates how the homograph corpus is then applied to a frequency and distribution analysis of ambiguity in natural written contexts, and an analysis of oral reading errors in the classroom. A dictation task reveals that participants who were taught a segmental modification of the negative prefix write with greater accuracy than participants who were taught to add tone diacritics.

목차

1. Introduction

2. Tone orthography research in the 21st century

3. The Kabiye people and their language

4. Catach’s model of lexical ambiguity

5. Building the homograph corpus: inclusion and exclusion

6. Applying the homograph corpus: pronominal, negative and immediative prefixes

7. Conclusion

키워드

homography written ambiguity tone orthography African Languages Kabiye