Abstract
Theoretical models for the analysis of data from alphabetic writing systems typically assume that the rule apparatus to be formulated generates data from conventional orthography. Moreover, they mostly focus on a rather narrow part of the vocabulary, conceptualized as the “core vocabulary”. However, it is worthwhile to take into account other parts of the vocabulary as well, like assimilated foreign words and indigenous proper names that also follow certain orthographic rules. The modular theory of writing systems (Neef 2005a) gives a suitable frame for this task. This approach has a more complex architecture than competing models in that it distinguishes between two constituting components called “graphematics” and “systematic orthography”, respectively, the latter being distinct from conventional orthography. With the graphematic solution space, the graphematic analysis implicitly provides the spelling potential of phonological units. This potential can typically be used to a certain extent only, depending on the part of the vocabulary the word to be spelled belongs to. This is captured in orthographic constraints. Usually, the theoretical analysis is not able to fully determine the spelling of the word at hand, but only to significantly reduce the graphematically licensed set of spelling options. The aim of this article is to conceive a suitable method of analysis in systematic orthography, starting with the phonological unit [f] for which relevant orthographic constraints for its spelling are formulated.
©2014 Walter de Gruyter, Berlin München Boston
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