Abstract

Abstract. Every word-initial and word-final letter cluster, or ngram, that occurred in 30 or more different words in one million words of Tunning text is listed along with the number of different words and the total number of words it appeared in. The relation of this list to other counts is discussed. Letters in the initial and final positions of words have a special role in reading. They begin or end not only their word, but also a phoneme, a syllable, or morpheme, and usually a spelling pattern (Fries, 1963; Gibson, Pick, Osser, and Hammond, 1962). Thus, clusters of letters in initial and final positions are more likely than medial clusters to constitute one or more of these units. Children just learning to read use initial and final letters as cues in word recognition more often than they use either medial letters or word shape (Marchbanks and Levin, 1965; Williams, Blumberg, and Williams, 1970). While adults do not use initial and final letters as often (Williams, Blumberg, and Williams, 1970), they still are more likely to perceive initial and final letters more accurately than medial letters in tachistoscopic presentation (Bruner and O'Dowd, 1958; Haslerud and