The role of sound-to-symbol literacy in phonological awareness: Evidence from Cantonese

Phonological awareness reflects linguistic knowledge related to the sound system of a language. Individual development of phonological awareness is known to progress from larger to smaller sized units and is promoted by the acquisition of literacy, especially in alphabet-based writing systems that are built around sound-to-symbol correspondences. The present study addressed the nature of phonological awareness in speakers of a logographically scripted language. It investigated phonological awareness in adult speakers of Cantonese hailing from Hong Kong who (compared to speakers of other logographically scripted languages) traditionally received little sound-based assistance from tools like Pinyin or Zhu-yin-Fu-Hao when they acquired orthography. The study adopted an individual difference approach, quantifying individually variable levels of experience with a sound-to-symbol writing system and their relationship to phonological awareness. Fifty-seven Hong-Kong speakers of Cantonese took part online, completing rhyme judgment and phoneme monitoring tasks, alongside an extensive background questionnaire. The main prediction that Cantonese speakers who had a relatively high level of experience with sound-to-symbol writing would show an advantage in phonological awareness at the subsyllabic level was largely borne out by the data. The findings of the present study suggest that phonological awareness is a complex set of dissociable skills, shaped by the linguistic and orthographic experience of individual speakers.