Abstract

The article presents the results of a comparative research regarding the phenomenon of grapho-phonetic alternations among 4 and 5 years old children from two different linguistic backgrounds. During the study, 60 children (30 Argentineans and 30 Italian) were asked to write the same list of words, first by hand and secondly using a pc keyboard; finalizing with a comparison of the two productions. With this procedure it was possible to comprehend the different ways children solve problems related to writing the same syllabic segments, from the use of more stable forms, as the "total identity", to more unstable forms, as the grapho-phonetic alternations. As already highlighted in previous research in the Spanish language, grapho-phonetic alternations are present in the three conceptualization levels in both languages of this study, furthermore in very similar frequency and percentages. This outcome provides further information about how children construct hypothesis with respect to the writing system, since it reflects the way in which they explore and introduce relevant phonemes in syllabic, syllabic-alphabetic and alphabetic spellings. The results also indicate that the presence and use of the pc keyboard does not affect significantly the greater variety and quantity of graphemes used in digital production compared to manual.