An onset is an onset: Evidence from abstraction of newly-learned phonotactic constraints.
Phonotactic constraints are language-specific patterns in the sequencing of speech sounds. Are these constraints represented at the syllable level (ngcannot begin syllables in English) or at the word level (ngcannot begin words)? In a continuous recognition-memory task, participants more often falsely recognized novel test items that followed than violated the training constraints, whether training and test items matched in word structure (one or two syllables) or position of restricted consonants (word-edge or word-medial position). E.g., learning thatps are onsets andfs codas, participants generalized frompef(one syllable) toputvif(two syllables), and fromputvif(word-edge positions) tobufpak(word-medial positions). These results suggest that newly-learned phonotactic constraints are represented at the syllable level. The syllable is a representational unit available and spontaneously used when learning speech-sound constraints. In the current experiments, an onset is an onset and a coda a coda, regardless of word structure or word position.
University of Illinois.
Amélie
A
Bernard
Adult language acquisition; generalization; phonotactic learning; statistical learning; syllable