Spinelli, E. 1, 3 , Sumner, M. . 2 & Johnson , K. . 3
1 Laboratoire de Psychologie et NeuroCognition, Université Pierre Mendès France, Grenoble, France
2 Department of linguistics, Stanford University, USA
3 Department of linguistics, University of Berkeley, USA
Upon hearing two variable forms for the concept of “20”, twenty (citation form) vs. twenny (nasal-flap form), do listeners form independent phonological representations for each word, associated with the same concept? Using the novel word-learning paradigm showing that newly-learnt non-words (e.g., lantobe) are lexicalized after a night of sleep and compete with similar words (e.g., lantern; Gaskell & Dumay, 2003), we test predictions made by a multiple-variants storage account of phonological variation. Specifically, English native speakers learned novel-words (e.g., advantape) that were either non-variable (all items were presented in the citation form only) or variable (all items were presented in both the citation and nasal-flap forms). One day after the learning phase, training on non-variable stimuli inhibited the recognition of words with shared overlap (e.g., advantage; replicating Gaskell & Dumay, 2003), but training on variable stimuli did not inhibit the recognition of these words. Because each novel-word received the same amount of exposure in both conditions, our results suggest that the nasal-flap and citation forms associated with the new lexical entries were not stored and not as one unique citation form. Rather, surface forms of novel-words seemed to be stored independently, each receiving not enough exposure for subsequent inhibition effect.