Kim Freeman

Sonorant Consonants

Introduction/Definition

Implications for Phonological Awareness

Implications for Spelling

Research/the developmental process of spelling

Conclusion

Introduction

Vowels and consonants that can be produced continuously at the same pitch are sonorant. (Wikipedia) Examples of sonorant consonants are /m/ and /l/.The vowel /a/ and the consonant /k/ are examples of non-sonorant. Sonorants are also called nasal consonants. Some research has shown that sonority may play a role in reading and spelling development.

Phonological Awareness

Phonetic factors may play an important role in determining cohesion between phonemes (Geudens & Sandra, 2003.p157). Phonemic segmentation is commonly used in reading and spelling programs. Geuden and Dominiek conducted a series of experiments to examine the influence of sonority based on the prediction that a vowel followed by high sonority consonant within a rhyme would be the most difficult to segment. The following experiments were conducted with pre and beginning readers:

Segmentation of two phoneme syllables

Segmentation of two phoneme syllables with older children (1 year)

Substitution in two phoneme syllables

Geudens & Sandra made a distinction between stops, fricatives, nasals and sonorants. This enabled them to investigate the cohesion between the vowel and adjacent consonant within the rhyme and between the onset and rhyme. Sonority was approached from a phonetic point of view.

Geuden and Sandra composed two lists each with 16 CV’s (consonant/vowel pattern) and 16 VC’s(vowel/consonant pattern. The CV list was derived from four vowels(4 vowels x 1 consonant of each type). The VC list was derived from the remaining four vowels and consonants. Every child heard a particular combination of phonemes as a CV or VC. Each child was required to name the phonemes of each syllable using an auditory segmentation task.

The results in all three experiments showed that the consonants degree of sonority affected children’s performance. Young children found it harder to repeat and segment items with sonorant. Beginning readers had difficulty segmenting consonant vowel (CV) than vowel consonant (VC). The bond between a VC is stronger for sonorous…than for less sonorous consonants (Treiman & Cassar, 1997.p778). The results of this study demonstrate that onset and rhyme are not important in phonological awareness and phonics might be a factor when measuring phonological awareness (Geudens & Dominiek, 2003.p165).

Spelling

The position of the consonant may be one reason children omit consonants in spelling.

Sonorant consonants are left out more than obstruent consonants (Treiman, Zukowski, Richmond, & Welty, 1995). Children treat nasal consonants as one unit. For example, they might leave out the letter n in hand. The obstruent consonant -s- is usually not grouped with a vowel, and usually children tend to spell these types of words correctly. Evidence of this comes from phonemic awareness tasks which examine the child’s ability to perceive and manipulate speech units. Children were asked to pronounce non-words sound by sound, putting down one token for each unit. Children often put down three tokens for non-words that contained a nasal in the final consonant. An example of a non-word used is wamp. The same children were usually very accurate when asked to pronounce non-words with syllable that did not contain this type of blend (Bourassa & Treiman, 2001).

The Developmental Process of Spelling

Past research in spelling has developed the belief that spelling instruction involves explicit instruction through representation of sounds. Spelling is now recognized as a developmental process of conceptual learning rather than rote learning. Children do not need explicit instruction on the relationships between sounds and letters (Chomsky,1970; Read,1971). This developmental process has been researched further to include invented spelling and morphology (Treiman,1993;Templeton,1979;Templeton & Scarborough-Franks, 1985). The developmental process includes reading and writing in spelling instruction (Templeton & Morris, 2001).

Conclusion

Phonological awareness instruction that is individualized specifically to a child’s difficulty may be effective instruction. An example of difficulty might be nasals in final consonant clusters. This type of pattern-based approach may best equip the child with skills required for maximal spelling development (Apel & Masterson, 2001).

Several studies (Coleman 1970, Yavas & Core 2001, Yavas & Gogate, 1999) show that cohesion between consonants and vowels is affected by sonority. These studies demonstrate that syllables with obsturents are easier to segment than syllables with sonorants.

Although spelling corresponds to phonology, it also corresponds to the semantic system. The spelling system has to do more than record speech sounds (Vachek,1989; Venezky,1970,1999).

Works Cited

Bourassa, D., Treiman, R. (2001). Spelling Development and Disability: The Importance of Linguistic Factors. Language, Speech and Hearing Services In Schools. 32, 172-181.

Bush, C. (1964). Phonetic Variation and Acoustic Distinctive Features. The Hague: Mouton & Company.

Carrell, J., Tiffany, W. (1960). Phonetics: Theory and Application to Speech Improvement. New York:McGraw Hill.

Geudens, A., Sandra, D. (2003). Beyond implicit phonological knowledge: No support for an onset-rime structure in children’s explicit phonological awareness. Journal of Memory and Language. 49, 157-182.

Templeton, S.,& Morris, D. (2001, October). Reconceptualizing spelling and instruction. Reading Online,5(3). http://www.readingonline.org

Internal Links

sonorant

nasal

phonological awareness

phonemic awareness

phonemic segmentation

stops

fricatives

obstruent

spelling

morphology

phonology

semantic

External Links

http://trill.berkeley.edu/users/ohala/papers

en.Wikipedia.org

http://www.departments.bucknell.edu/linguistics/sounds/sonorant.html

http://www.bookrags.com/obstruent

http://www.spiritus-temporis.com/sonorant

commentary by Kelly Murphy

You have presented a nice addition to the WIKI. This is a topic that I am pretty unfamiliar with. However, I do remember talking a little about it in a couple of our graduate classes. I think it would be interesting to compare the research you h ave found on spelling to that of Donald Bear in "Words Their Way." In your introduction you wrote, Consonants /a/ and /k/ are examples of non-sonorant. but the letter a is not a consonant it is a vowel. You prpbably just hit the wrong key, but you may want to straighten that up. I also feel that it would be helpful to the reader if you used links throughout your page instead of at the end. For example, you could make a link for your headings phonemic awareness and spelling. That way the reader can click on the link as soon as they read about it instead of waiting until they are finished with the piece. This may clear up a few questions for the reader. When you listed the three experiments in phonemic awareness you misspelled the word "two" in the second experiment. You may want to consider adding a link from pretty fricatives, that is a term that I am unfamiliar with. In the 3rd paragraph under phonoligical awareness you talk about VC and CV words. You may want to clarify that C=consonant and V=vowel.

Here are some internal links that you may want to think about adding: phonological awareness, onset and rime, fricatives, obstruent consonants.

I went to Wikipedia to get more indepth definition of sonorant and I feel that it would be very helpful for you to include this as an external link.

Another thing I found is that none of your external links are working. I tried to cut and paste the url addresses to link to the page, but that didn't work. I think you should go in and fix these links where the reader can click on the page and it would automatically direct them to the page you intend for them to see.

Commentary by Elizabeth Walker

Kelly mentioned some of the things I found I think to fix you links you need to put the brackets around them, or it may be the periods? I am not familiar with obstruent consonants you may want to give some examples like you did with the others, or possabiliy an internal link would work well. Your paper is very informative, you did a great job.

Commentary by Jeanice Lewis

Kelly and Elizabeth covered all of the bases as far as content of the page. You did a great job; very informative and organized page. The only thing I see that could improve the flow of your page and supplemental pages is that you add a link back to your main page. On the supplemental pages just add brackets around Sonorant consonants.