Abstract
[Reading Acquisition and Segmental Analysis of Speech]
The paper examines the relation between reading acquisition in an alphabetic system and the development of abilities to analyze speech into elementary units, or segments. These abilities appear instrumental in learning to use grapheme-phoneme correspondences. Although grapho-phonological regularities seem to have only a limited role in fluent reading, their function is probably more important during reading acquisition. Several possible functions arc delineated, among which an important one could be to help storing orthographic representations of words in the mental lexicon. Correlational and experimental data from the literature support the present view, and show also that the development of segmental analysis abilities depends partly on the confrontation to reading instruction. We conclude that the understanding of reading acquisition failures and difficulties could be improved by the identification of determinants of speech analysis skills and of their development.