Abstract
Languages differ in the constitution of their phonemic repertoire and in the relative distinctiveness of phonemes within the repertoire. In the present study, we asked whether such differences constrain spoken-word recognition, via two word reconstruction experiments, in which listeners turned nonwords into real words by changing single sounds. The experiments were carried out in Dutch (which has a relatively balanced vowel—consonant ratio and many similar vowels) and in Spanish (which has many more consonants than vowels and high distinctiveness among the vowels). Both Dutch and Spanish listeners responded significantly faster and more accurately when required to change vowels as opposed to consonants; when allowed to change any phoneme, they more often altered vowels than consonants. Vowel information thus appears to constrain lexical selection less tightly (allow more potential candidates) than does consonant information, independent of language-specific phoneme repertoire and of relative distinctiveness of vowels.
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Partial reports of the study were presented to the joint conference of the Acoustical Society of America and the European Acoustics Association, Berlin, in March 1999. This research was supported by grants from the Human Frontier Scientific Program, from Acciones Integradas Hispano-Alemanas, and from the Ministry of Education and Science, Spain.
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Cutler, A., Sebastián-Gallés, N., Soler-Vilageliu, O. et al. Constraints of vowels and consonants on lexical selection: Cross-linguistic comparisons. Memory & Cognition 28, 746–755 (2000). https://doi.org/10.3758/BF03198409
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DOI: https://doi.org/10.3758/BF03198409