ABSTRACT
Theories of reading–writing and theories of speech typically have in common that neither takes proper account of an obvious fact about language that must, in any reckoning, be critically relevant to both: There is a vast difference in naturalness between its spoken and written forms. In the development of writing systems, the answer is simple and beyond dispute: Parity was established by agreement. A related requirement concerns rate, for if all utterances are to be formed by variously stringing together an exiguous set of signal elements, then, inevitably, the strings must run to great lengths. The thoroughly visual way to read, described earlier, is the obvious alternative, doing everything that natural language does without ever touching its structures and processes. Developing an awareness of phonological structure, and hence an understanding of the alphabetic principle, is made the more difficult by the co-articulation that is central to the function of the phonetic specialisation.
