Orthography of phonemes /l/ and /ɾ/ in complex positions in children's writing: a comparative analysis

Assuming that errors are actually hits attempts, and may mark the child's conflicts with the orthographic system, we investigated the orthographic record of two phonemes that refer to the class of liquids: /l/ and /ɾ/.

(1) to compare the orthographic accuracy, in the complex onset and coda syllable positions, of the phonemes spelling /l/ and /ɾ/; (2) to verify, among the errors, their most frequent typesr.

We analyzed 53 textual productions of children of the 1st year of the cycle I of the elementary school of a public school in a city of the state of São Paulo. To respond to the objectives, initially all occurrences of the phonemes /l/ and /ɾ/ were separated in the complex onset position and coda syllabic position. Then, the records were categorized as hits and errors. Errors were also classified as omission, transposition and substitution.

In the complex syllabic onset and syllable coda, a higher number of hits was found when compared to the number of errors. As for the types of errors, in the complex onset position, all corresponded to omissions; in the coda, omissions prevailed, followed by substitutions and transpositions.

The results suggest that the child's perception of the relations between phonemes and graphemes does not depend directly on these relations, since this correspondence may be affected by other phonological aspects disregarded in these relations, such as syllable positions.