Black, A. & Noguchi, M.
The University of British Columbia
We know that listeners can segment words from continuous speech based on statistical dependencies between adjacent syllables. However, less attention has been paid to the role of the phonological properties of the syllables themselves. In this study, we investigated whether an abstract similarity between syllables, defined in terms of a shared phonological feature - i.e. consonantal or vocalic harmony - affects word segmentation.
Fifty participants (data collection ongoing) were exposed to one of three languages, which consisted of 4 trisyllabic words: one without harmony (Control), one with consonant harmony (CH), and one with vowel harmony (VH). After exposure, participants were tested on their knowledge of the words through a 2-AFC task. The results showed that participants in the CH group performed slightly better than those in the Control group (Control: M=68% (n=20); CH: M=74% (n=10)), while participants in the VH group performed like those in the Control group (VH: M=67% (n=17)). This suggests that certain features facilitate word segmentation when those features are shared between adjacent syllables. Moreover, these results have implications for the question of the functional difference between consonants and vowels in the construction of linguistic knowledge.