title: Diminutives facilitate word segmentation in natural speech: cross-linguistic evidence.
abstract: Final-syllable invariance is characteristic of diminutives (e.g., doggie), which are a pervasive feature of the child-directed speech registers of many languages. Invariance in word endings has been shown to facilitate word segmentation (Kempe, Brooks, & Gillis, 2005) in an incidental-learning paradigm in which synthesized Dutch pseudonouns were used. To broaden the cross-linguistic evidence for this invariance effect and to increase its ecological validity, adult English speakers (n=276) were exposed to naturally spoken Dutch or Russian pseudonouns presented in sentence contexts. A forced choice test was given to assess target recognition, with foils comprising unfamiliar syllable combinations in Experiments 1 and 2 and syllable combinations straddling word boundaries in Experiment 3. A control group (n=210) received the recognition test with no prior exposure to targets. Recognition performance improved with increasing final-syllable rhyme invariance, with larger increases for the experimental group. This confirms that word ending invariance is a valid segmentation cue in artificial, as well as naturalistic, speech and that diminutives may aid segmentation in a number of languages.
authors.affiliation: Department of Psychology, University of Stirling, Stirling, Scotland. vk2@stir.ac.uk
authors.forename: Vera
authors.initials: V
authors.lastname: Kempe
authors.forename: Patricia J
authors.initials: PJ
authors.lastname: Brooks
authors.forename: Steven
authors.initials: S
authors.lastname: Gillis
authors.forename: Graham
authors.initials: G
authors.lastname: Samson
mesh_terms: D000293:Adolescent; D000328:Adult; D003431:Cross-Cultural Comparison; D003463:Cues; D005260:Female; D006801:Humans; D007802:Language; D008037:Linguistics; D008297:Male; D013060:Speech; D014705:Verbal Behavior; D014825:Vocabulary