Nicholas Bodley wrote:

>
> On Fri, 22 Apr 2005 01:58:43 -0400, suzmccarth <suzmccarth@...>
> wrote:
>
> > Here is a paragraph from Fevrier on Cree and Cherokee.
>
> > [...] because the decomposition into vowels and consonants demands an
> > effort of abstraction,
>
> Suffice it to say that I find it unexpected and quite interesting to learn
> about the greater difficulty (at least sometimes) of learning about vowels
> and consonants as separate categories. Messages over the past few months
> or so have made this clear; Marco C.'s description of learning by
> syllables instead of individual letters was quite interesting.

You'll find the essential psycholinguistics bibliography on the topic in
my 1992 [1988] article in Downing, Lima, and Noonan, ed., The
Linguistics of Literacy (Benjamins). Some dissent has been published
since 1988, but it isn't convincing.
--
Peter T. Daniels grammatim@...