Resolution of liaison for lexical access in French

Spoken word recognition involves automatic activation of lexical candidates compatible with the perceived input. In running speech, words about one another without intervening gaps, and syllable boundaries can mismatch with word boundaries. For instance, liaison in 'petit agneau' creates a syllable beginning with a consonant although 'agneau' begins with a vowel. In cross modal priming experiments we investigate how French listeners recognise words in liaison environments. These results suggest that the resolution of liaison in part depends on acoustic cues which distinguish liaison from non-liason consonants, and in part on the availability of lexical support for a liaison interpretation.