Possible words and fixed stress in the segmentation of Slovak speech.
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.
Hanulíková
Adriana
A
Max Planck Institute for Psycholinguistics, Nijmegen, The Netherlands. adriana.hanulikova@mpi.nl
McQueen
James M
JM
Mitterer
Holger
H
D000328:Adult; D006801:Humans; D008875:Middle Aged; D010700:Phonetics; D011930:Reaction Time / Q000502:physiology; D021641:Recognition, Psychology; D018154:Slovakia; D013060:Speech / Q000502:physiology*; D013067:Speech Perception / Q000502:physiology*; D013334:Students; D013997:Time Factors; D014495:Universities; D014825:Vocabulary