ABSTRACT
Recent research suggests that there is a level of structure in spoken words that is intermediate in size between syllables and phonemes (see Treiman, 1992, for a review). Several studies reported by Treiman indicate that the ability to segment into phonemes is preceded by the ability to segment syllable units into the intrasyllabic units of onset and rime, where onset is the initial consonant or consonant cluster, and rime is the vowel and any following consonants. Research further indicates that, for most children, sensitivity to the onset-rime division emerges spontaneously in development prior to exposure to reading instruction (Goswami & Bryant, 1990, 1992). In contrast, the ability to completely segment a word or syllable into its phonemic elements seems to develop only under certain learning conditions, such as when children are exposed to instruction in an alphabetic script (Bowey & Francis, 1991) or given specific training in phonemic segmentation skills (Lundberg, Frost, & Petersen, 1988).
