Working Paper

TPCS 34: Comparing spelling and segmentation practices in three versions of a Mandinka text

This working paper discusses writing and literacy in an African society in which literacy is not formally educated and not commonly practiced to develop new ideas about the question what the basic units for the perception and processing of human languages are. Words, sub-word units like syllables or morphemes, multi-word constructions, or something else entirely?

Kasper Juffermans Dorina Veldhuis

Published date

23/05/2025 - 08:02

Copyright

This work is licensed under a Creative Commons Attribution-NonCommercial 4.0 International License.

Read time

2 minutes

By Kasper Juffermans and Dorina Veldhuis

Abstract

This paper combines insights, data and methods from two projects conducted in two different research traditions: an ethnographic sociolinguistic study of literacy products in a West African society (The Gambia), and an experimental cognitive linguistic study into the influence of literacy on spelling practices and segmentation of linguistic units. Our paper reviews experimental research into non-literates' metalinguistic awareness and analyses texts from the ethnographic study in order to address questions of units of language and units of writing in Mandinka. Through a comparative text analysis of three differently authored versions of a short text in Mandinka, ‘the donkey story’, we argue that awareness of units in language not only depends on the language, script or writing system in which one acquires literacy, but that the sociolinguistic context and the orthographic regime of the society in which people learn to write, spell and segment, also matters.

Keywords: Literacy practices; grassroots literacy; units of language and writing; metalinguistic awareness; spelling

How to quote (APA): Juffermans, K., & Veldhuis, T. M. (2012). Comparing spelling and segmentation practices in three versions of a Mandinka text. (Tilburg Papers in Culture Studies; No. 34). Tilburg University.

Read the full working paper here: Comparing spelling and segmentation practices in three versions of a Mandinka text.