Orthographies and Orthography Development
Bibliographic Data
| ID | 23658583 |
|---|---|
| Authors | Keith L Snider (0000-0002-3878-9428, corresponding author) |
| Year | 2025 |
| Pages | 1-6 |
| Publication date | 2025-12-02 |
| Peer Reviewed | Yes |
| Open Access | Yes |
| Type | CHAPTER |
| Venue | Encyclopedia of Applied Linguistics (SOURCE_BOOK) |
| Publisher | Wiley (PUBLISHER • GB) |
| DOI | 10.1002/9781405198431.wbeal0887.pub2 |
| OpenAlex | W4416917566 |
| ISBN | 9781405198431 |
| Language | EN |
| References cited | 5 |
An orthography is the set of symbols and the conventions governing their use that members of a language community employ when they write in their language. Although each symbol in some orthographies (e.g., Chinese) represents a meaning as opposed to a sound, most orthographies being developed today are alphabetic, with each symbol representing one or more of the contrastive sounds in the language. Some language communities are best served by orthographies that are shallow, with one‐to‐one correspondences between the symbols of their orthographies and the contrastive sounds of their languages. Other communities, however, are better served by deep orthographies, which have one‐to‐many correspondences between some of the symbols and sounds. In such cases, the symbols are pronounced differently in different phonological environments. For example, although the English present tense suffix is written with only one symbol , it is pronounced [s] after voiceless sounds (e.g., [klæps] “claps”) and [z] elsewhere (e.g., [rɔbz] “robs,” [mɪsəz] “misses”). Unfortunately, determining how deep or shallow an orthography should be when developing a new one is often not straightforward. The Lexical Orthography Hypothesis offers a promising solution for orthography developers to determine the optimal depth for the orthographies they are developing.
Meaning (existential) · Orthography · Phonetics · Suffix · Symbol (formal)
| Citation velocity | historical |
|---|---|
| Highly cited | No |