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Use of complex phonological patterns in speech processing: evidence from Korean

Published online by Cambridge University Press:  28 June 2005

NATASHA WARNER
Affiliation:
Department of Linguistics, University of Arizona
JEESUN KIM
Affiliation:
Department of Psychology, University of Melbourne
CHRIS DAVIS
Affiliation:
Department of Psychology, University of Melbourne
ANNE CUTLER
Affiliation:
Max Planck Institute for Psycholinguistics, Nijmegen

Abstract

Korean has a very complex phonology, with many interacting alternations. In a coronal-/i/ sequence, depending on the type of phonological boundary present, alternations such as palatalization, nasal insertion, nasal assimilation, coda neutralization, and intervocalic voicing can apply. This paper investigates how the phonological patterns of Korean affect processing of morphemes and words. Past research on languages such as English, German, Dutch, and Finnish has shown that listeners exploit syllable structure constraints in processing speech and segmenting it into words. The current study shows that in parsing speech, listeners also use much more complex patterns that relate the surface phonological string to various boundaries.

Type
Research Article
Copyright
2005 Cambridge University Press

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Footnotes

This work was supported by a SPINOZA award from the Nederlandse Organisatie voor Wetenschappelijk Onderzoek to the fourth author. We would like to thank Taehong Cho, Adam Ussishkin, James McQueen, Mike Hammond, Rachel Hayes-Harb, and Gwanhi Yun for useful discussion of this paper, as well as two anonymous JL referees for their helpful feedback. We are also very grateful to Prof. Mahn Young Lee for enabling us to conduct Experiment 1 at Korea University, and to Maarten Jansonius for research assistance.