THE SPECIAL ROLE OF RIMES IN THE DESCRIPTION, USE, AND ACQUISITION OFENGLISH ORTHOGRAPHY

The links between spellings and sounds in a large set of English words with consonant-vowel-consonant phonological structure were examined. Orthographic rimes, or units consisting of a vowel grapheme and a fina l consonant grapheme, had more stable pronunciations than either indiv idual vowels or initial consonant-plus-vowel units. In 2 large-scale s tudies of word pronunciation, the consistency of pronunciation of the orthographic rime accounted for variance in latencies and errors beyon d that contributed by the consistency of pronunciation of the individu al graphemes and by other factors. In 3 experiments, as well, children and adults made more errors on words with less consistently pronounce d orthographic rimes than on words with more consistently pronounced o rthographic rimes. Relations between spellings and sounds in the simpl e monomorphemic words of English are more predictable when the level o f onsets and rimes is taken into account than when only graphemes and phonemes are considered.