ABSTRACT
The aim of this chapter is to show that orthographic knowledge and the use of prosodic features are related, and that knowledge of orthography affects movement through text. The unusual roles of orthography and prosody were described as early as 1637 by Ben Jonson when he wrote: “Prosody, and orthography are not parts of grammar, but are difused [sic] like the blood and spirits through the whole” (OED, p. 1492). Recent studies have come to similar metaphoric conclusions. Cutler and Isard (1980) likened prosody to a good sauce, thus highlighting the need to study combinations of prosodic features within the context of the full spectrum of language systems: “and like a good sauce, the realization of a sentence’s prosodic structure is a blend of different ingredients none of which can be separately identified in the final product” (p. 245).
