Language-universal constraints on speech segmentation

Dennis Norris, James M. McQueen, Anne Cutler, Sally Butterfield, Ruth Kearns

    Research output: Contribution to journalArticle

    33 Citations (Scopus)

    Abstract

    Two word-spotting experiments are reported that examine whether the Possible-Word Constraint (PWC) is a language-specific or language-universal strategy for the segmentation of continuous speech. The PWC disfavours parses which leave an impossible residue between the end of a candidate word and any likely location of a word boundary, as cued in the speech signal. The experiments examined cases where the residue was either a CVC syllable with a schwa, or a CV syllable with a lax vowel. Although neither of these syllable contexts is a possible lexical word in English, word-spotting in both contexts was easier than in a context consisting of a single consonant. Two control lexical-decision experiments showed that the word-spotting results reflected the relative segmentation difficulty of the words in different contexts. The PWC appears to be language-universal rather than language-specific.
    Original languageEnglish
    JournalLanguage and cognitive processes
    Publication statusPublished - 2001

    Keywords

    • cognitive psychology
    • language
    • language and linguistics
    • neuropsychology
    • speech disorders
    • speech perception

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