Toward a differentiation of descriptive and psycholinguistic language models: perceptual and orthographic/phonological analysis of spelling strategies.

Linguistic concepts of the principles and rule systems composing language are instantiated in the models known as grammars. These grammars, typically generative in format, are descriptions of those representatives of universal rule processes found in the particular language being described. Many psycholinguists are now becoming concerned with how to determine to what extent such formal descriptive language models also embody psychologically valid descriptions of speaker processes. It is this issue to which the current article is addressed. The psycholinguistic validity of a language model may be studied by experimental investigation of the degree to which speaker behaviors follow the patterns dictated by linguistic theory. In this article, English phonology, specifically the nature of phonological units in internalized phonological representations, was chosen as the area for study. The choice was made because English phonology is particularly well described by the standard theory, and because this theory contains explicit predictions about how English speakers' phonological knowledge will be realized in their control of English orthography, e.g., in spelling. The present article discusses a series of studies designed to determine whether speakers' spelling behavior follows the supposed patterns of phonological competence, wherein any divergences may lie, and to what processes they may be attributed. The results of the studies suggest the necessity for differentiating a formal description of English phonology from a psycholinguistic model.