Chapter 6 - Foundational Explorations

Summary

Chapter 6 reports on some foundational tests conducted prior to pursuing my case studies. For the exploratory work, searches were conducted on <i>/<j>, <u>/<w> and <w>/<wh>, using all of the parameter options explained in the previous chapter. A case is made for explaining why these variants represent a suitable subject for my foundational explorations, quantitatively and qualitatively. My results indicate that not all graphemes are relevant for a given analysis of a spelling unit, most often because of complex language-internal constraints. Statements like these can be made confidently on the basis of the extensiveness of the EModE vocabulary database, against which judgements about variation are made. The chapter then investigates possible challenges in automatic analyses of spelling development by investigating semantic ambiguity in <u> and <w>, and discusses results which suggest an independence of spelling from word meaning. The results discussed are important for an assessment of the extent to which the new empirical method can be used reliably in current and future research work, and provide an encouraging outcome.