Phonological processes and the perception of phonotactically illegal consonant clusters

Journal/Book: Percept Psychophys. 1998; 60: 1710 Fortview Rd, Austin, TX 78704. Psychonomic Soc Inc. 941-951.

Abstract: The perception of consonant clusters that are phonotactically illegal word initially in English (e.g., /tl/, /sr/) was investigated to determine whether listeners' phonological knowledge of the language influences speech processing. Experiment 1 examined whether the phonotactic context effect (Massaro & Cohen, 1983), a bias toward hearing illegal sequences (e.g., /tl/) as legal (e.g., /tr/), is more likely due to knowledge of the legal phoneme combinations in English or to a frequency effect. In Experiment 2, Experiment 1 was repeated with the clusters occurring word medially to assess whether phonotactic rules of syllabification modulate the phonotactic effect. Experiment 3 examined whether vowel epenthesis, another phonological process, might also affect listeners' perception of illegal sequences as legal by biasing them to hear a vowel between the consonants of the cluster (e.g., /(sic)/). Results suggest that knowledge of the phonotactically permissible sequences in English can affect phoneme processing in multiple ways.

Note: Article Pitt MA, Ohio State Univ, Dept Psychol, 1885 Neil Ave, Columbus,OH 43220 USA

Keyword(s): AUDITORY WORD RECOGNITION; SPEECH-PERCEPTION; NATIVE-LANGUAGE; PHONEME IDENTIFICATION; INTERACTIVE PROCESSES; INFANTS SENSITIVITY; SENTENCE CONTEXT; TRACE MODEL; ENGLISH; CONSTRAINTS

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