The Effects of Misalignment between Syllable and Word Onsets on Word Recognition in English

음절의 시작과 단어 시작의 불일치가 영어 단어 인지에 미치는 영향

  • 김선미 (고려대학교 심리학과 인지신경과학 연구실) ;
  • 남기춘 (고려대학교 심리학과)
  • Published : 2009.12.30

Abstract

This study aims to investigate whether the misalignment between syllable and word onsets due to the process of resyllabification affects Korean-English late bilinguals perceiving English continuous speech. Two word-spotting experiments were conducted. In Experiment 1, misalignment conditions (resyllabified conditions) were created by adding CVC contexts at the beginning of vowel-initial words and alignment conditions (non-resyllabified conditions) were made by putting the same CVC contexts at the beginning of consonant-initial words. The results of Experiment 1 showed that detections of targets in alignment conditions were faster and more correct than in misalignment conditions. Experiment 2 was conducted in order to avoid any possibilities that the results of Experiment 1 were due to consonant-initial words being easier to recognize than vowel-initial words. For this reason, all the experimental stimuli of Experiment 2 were vowel-initial words preceded by CVC contexts or CV contexts. Experiment 2 also showed misalignment cost when recognizing words in resyllabified conditions. These results indicate that Korean listeners are influenced by misalignment between syllable and word onsets triggered by a resyllabification process when recognizing words in English connected speech.

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