Measuring Phonological and Orthographic Similarity

Abstract

Marked and unmarked language forms can be distinguished with the level of simplicity or complexity denotations of the forms. Unmarked target language forms may create little or no difficulty, even if they do not exist in the native language of the learner, while marked forms can be relatively difficult for language learners. In addition to the notions of markedness/unmarkedness, there has also been an emphasis on similarity and dissimilarity between the items of first (L1) and second languages (L2). Along with similarity or dissimilarity of L1 and L2 forms, the level of difficulty may vary enormously in different language-specific procedures. In this chapter, therefore, it is intended to build an understanding of the recognized pronunciation and orthographic problems of similar loanwords in both Turkish (L1 of the participants) and English (L2).