How consonants and vowels shape spoken-language recognition

Thierry Nazzi, Anne Cutler

Research output: Contribution to journalArticlepeer-review

48 Citations (Scopus)

Abstract

All languages instantiate a consonant/vowel contrast. This contrast has processing consequences at different levels of spoken-language recognition throughout the lifespan. In adulthood, lexical processing is more strongly associated with consonant than with vowel processing; this has been demonstrated across 13 languages from seven language families and in a variety of auditory lexical-level tasks (deciding whether a spoken input is a word, spotting a real word embedded in a minimal context, reconstructing a word minimally altered into a pseudoword, learning new words or the “words” of a made-up language), as well as in written-word tasks involving phonological processing. In infancy, a consonant advantage in word learning and recognition is found to emerge during development in some languages, though possibly not in others, revealing that the stronger lexicon–consonant association found in adulthood is learned. Current research is evaluating the relative contribution of the early acquisition of the acoustic/phonetic and lexical properties of the native language in the emergence of this association.
Original languageEnglish
Pages (from-to)25-47
Number of pages23
JournalAnnual Review of Linguistics
Volume5
DOIs
Publication statusPublished - 2019

Keywords

  • consonants
  • infants
  • phonology
  • speech perception
  • vowels

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