Phonologically determined asymmetries in vocabulary structure across languages

Anne Cutler, Takashi Otake, Laurence Bruggeman

    Research output: Contribution to journalArticlepeer-review

    5 Citations (Scopus)

    Abstract

    Studies of spoken-word recognition have revealed that competition from embedded words differs in strength as a function of where in the carrier word the embedded word is found and have further shown embedding patterns to be skewed such that embeddings in initial position in carriers outnumber embeddings in final position. Lexico-statistical analyses show that this skew is highly attenuated in Japanese, a noninflectional language. Comparison of the extent of the asymmetry in the three Germanic languages English, Dutch, and German allows the source to be traced to a combination of suffixal morphology and vowel reduction in unstressed syllables.
    Original languageEnglish
    Pages (from-to)EL155-EL160
    Number of pages6
    JournalJournal of the Acoustical Society of America
    Volume132
    Issue number2
    DOIs
    Publication statusPublished - 2012

    Keywords

    • Dutch language
    • English language
    • German language
    • Japanese language
    • phonology
    • speech perception
    • vocabulary
    • vowels

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