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Title: | Possible words and fixed stress in the segmentation of Slovak speech |
Authors: | Hanulikova, Adriana McQueen, James M. Mitterer, Holger |
Keywords: | Phonetics Word recognition Slovak language Speech perception |
Issue Date: | 2010 |
Publisher: | Taylor & Francis |
Citation: | Hanulikova, A., McQueen, J. M., & Mitterer, H. (2010). Possible words and fixed stress in the segmentation of Slovak speech. The Quarterly Journal of Experimental Psychology, 63(3), 555-579. |
Abstract: | The possible-word constraint (PWC; Norris, McQueen, Cutler, & Butterfield, 1997) has been proposed as a language-universal segmentation principle: Lexical candidates are disfavoured if the resulting segmentation of continuous speech leads to vowelless residues in the input—for example, single consonants. Three word-spotting experiments investigated segmentation in Slovak, a language with single-consonant words and fixed stress. In Experiment 1, Slovak listeners detected real words such as ruka “hand” embedded in prepositional-consonant contexts (e.g., /gruka/) faster than those in nonprepositional-consonant contexts (e.g., /truka/) and slowest in syllable contexts (e.g., /dugruka/). The second experiment controlled for effects of stress. Responses were still fastest in prepositional- consonant contexts, but were now slowest in nonprepositional-consonant contexts. In Experiment 3, the lexical and syllabic status of the contexts was manipulated. Responses were again slowest in nonprepositional-consonant contexts but equally fast in prepositional-consonant, prepositional-vowel, and nonprepositional-vowel contexts. These results suggest that Slovak listeners use fixed stress and the PWC to segment speech, but that single consonants that can be words have a special status in Slovak segmentation. Knowledge about what constitutes a phonologically acceptable word in a given language therefore determines whether vowelless stretches of speech are or are not treated as acceptable parts of the lexical parse. |
URI: | https://www.um.edu.mt/library/oar//handle/123456789/25357 |
Appears in Collections: | Scholarly Works - FacMKSCS |
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Possible_words_and_fixed_stress_in_the_segmentation of Slovak speech.pdf | 383.59 kB | Adobe PDF | View/Open |
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