Earlier research has suggested that left embedded words (e.g. cat in catalog) present a problem for spoken word recognition since it is potentially unclear whether there is a word boundary at the offset of cat. Models of spoken word recognition have incorporated processes of competition so that the identification of embedded words can be delayed until longer interpretations have been ruled out....

Otitis media with effusion (OME) often results in hearing loss for children with the condition. In order to provide appropriate and effective audiologic management, it is important to understand the impact of OME on speech recognition ability when hearing loss is present. This study examined the speech recognition abilities of normal-hearing six- and seven-year-old children (n = 12) and adults ...

Fudge (1969), Clements and Keyser (1983), and Davis (1984) have all pointed out a number of systematic phonotactic constraints holding between a prevocalic and a postvocalic consonant in English monosyllabic words. One of the strongest of these constraints, and one that has been observed by all three of the above mentioned researchers, is that there are no monosyllabic words of the form sCVC in...

Starting from a view on language as complex, hierarchically organized system composed of many parts that have interactions, this paper investigates statistical relationships between the linguistic variables “phoneme inventory size,” “syllable “length words,” clauses,” and nonlinguistic variable “population size.” By analyzing parallel textual material 61 languages (18 families) we found strong ...

Ferdinand de Saussure’s Cours linguistique générale reproduced a misconception of Chinese as monosyllabic language without complex words. In this paper, we investigate the sources in Western thought. We also show that about was already known to be inaccurate time, and he had many missed opportunities find out. While Saussure empirical errors Comparatists Neogrammarians with respect Chinese, mov...

During the last 20 years, psycholinguistic research has identified many variables that influence reading and spelling processes. We describe a new computerized lexical database, LEXOP, which provides quantitative descriptors about the relations between orthography and phonology for French monosyllabic words. Three main classes of variables are considered: consistency of print-to-sound and sound...

Nasal diphthongs are quite rare in the world’s languages. This paper analyzes how speakers control articulatory movements for nasal diphthongs in Brazilian Portuguese (BP). Our aim is to characterize the oral-nasal coupling in posterior nasal diphthongs from the Paulistano dialect spoken in the city of Sao Paulo. We show that oral and nasal diphthongs have different tongue contours, besides vel...

Lexicons utilize a fraction of licit structures. Different theories predict either that lexicons prioritize contrastiveness or structural economy. Study 1 finds that the monosyllabic lexicon of Mandarin is no more distinctive than a randomly sampled baseline using the phonological inventory. Study 2 finds that the lexicons of Mandarin and American English have fewer phonotactically complex word...

Most empirical work in spoken word recognition has focused on monosyllabic words, and most theories and models are limited to monosyllables either in scope or in practice (in that the theories' predictions for polysyllabic words have largely been unexplored). We add to the small number of studies to date explicitly comparing recognition of monoand polysyllabic words with a study examining time ...