ABSTRACT
The rules relating spellings to sounds seem to be useful in adult reading as well as in learning to read. There are three ways people might make use of the existence of rules: the component—correspondence method uses knowledge of letter—sound relations; the analogy method makes inferences based on the changes in whole words; and the similarity method takes over the entire response from a similar word. Evidence for all three methods is found in three studies of adults pronouncing nonsense syllables. The analogy method is most frequently associated with correct answers. The role of analogy in teaching people to read, and in the origin of linguistic rules, is discussed.
