The role of phonology in a letter detection task

REBECCATRElMAN 0 1 2 3 JOE INMAN 0 1 2 3 0 This research is part of a doctoral dissertation and was presented , in part, at the meeting of the Midwestern Psychological Society in May 1995. The first author gratefully acknowledges the support of her doc toral committee members , John Mullennix, Martha Ratliff, and Doug Whitman. This work was supported in part by NSF Grant SBR-9408456 dressed to J. Gross, Psychology Department , Grand Valley State Uni versity, 292 Au Sable Hall, Allendale, MI 49401-940 I( 1 Wayne State University , Detroit, Michigan 2 JENNIFER GROSS Grand Valley State University , Grand Rapids, Michigan 3 Effects of syllable structure on adults' phoneme monitoring perfor mance. Research on Speech Perception (Progress Report No.8). Bloomington: Indiana University, Speech Research Laboratory. TREIMAN , R., & ZUKOWSKI, A. (1988). Units in reading and spelling. Journal ofMemory & Language , 27, 466-477. TREIMAN, R., ZUKOWSKI, A., & RICHMOND-WELTY, D. (1995). What happened to the "n" of sink? Children's spelling of final consonant clusters. Cognition , 55, 1-38. VAN ORDEN, G. C. (1987). A ROWS is a ROSE: Spelling, sound, and read ing. Memory & Cognition , 15,181-198. VAN ORDEN, G. c., JOHNSTON , J In two experiments, we investigated whether onsets and rimes have a role in the processing of written English. In both experiments, participants detected letter targets (e.g., t) in non words like vult faster than in nonwords like vust. This finding is consistent with Selkirk's (1982) view that sonorants (e.g., the III of vult) cohere with preceding short vowels and are part of the vowel nucleus. In contrast, the ItI of oust is part of the syllable's coda st and so is harder to isolate. Experiment 2 demonstrated that the time required for one to detect single-member codas following vowel digraphs (e.g., the t in veet) was similar to the time to detect the same target letter following a postvocalic sonorant (e.g., the t in vult). No evidence was found for onsets. The results provide support for a phonological organization among letters of printed rimes. - Units between Syllables and Phonemes in Spoken English In recent theories of syllable structure, the spoken syl lable is viewed as more than a mere string of phonemes. Many linguists (Fudge, 1969; MacKay, 1972; Selkirk, 1982; Vergnaud & Halle, 1979) postulate at least one level of representation intermediate between phonemes and syl lables. According to this bipartite view of the spoken syl lable, there is an intermediate division of a syllable whereby some phonemic sequences within a syllable are more co hesive than others. According to this view, the syllable /breikl can be broken into onset /brl (initial consonant or consonant cluster) and rime leikl (vowel nucleus and final consonant or consonant cluster). These intermediate units are further divisible into phonemes. Another view of the spoken syllable, the tripartite view, contends that the organization of phonemes within a syl lable reflects a perceptual characteristic called the "sonor ity sequencing principle" (Bloomfield, 1933; Clements & Keyser, 1983). According to this view, oscillating patterns of sonority govern the preferred order of segments within the syllable, and the primary divisions of the spoken syl lable are onset, peak (vowel nucleus), and coda (final con sonant or consonant cluster) (Clements & Keyser, 1983). Thus, the syllable /breik/ comprises the onset /br/, peak lei/, and coda Ik/. The distinguishing characteristic of the bipartite view of the spoken syllable (Fudge, 1969; MacKay, 1972; Sel kirk, 1982; Vergnaud & Halle, 1979) is the implication that the relationship between peak and coda (together, in the bipartite view, the rime) is closer than that between peak and onset. In contrast, proponents of the tripartite view claim that there is no persuasive evidence for the spo ken rime. In this view, distributional constraints between the nucleus and the coda are as common as co-occurrence restrictions between the nucleus and the onset (the body) (Clements & Keyser, 1983). The bipartite view and the tripartite view are not entirely incongruent. According to the tripartite view, phonemic segments are arranged so that more sonorous segments are closer to the center ofthe syllable, and less sonorous seg ments are farther away (Clements & Keyser, 1983). The nucleus, which is the sonorous peak of a syllable, corre sponds to the beginning ofa syllable's rime and the end of a syllable's body. Troughs in sonority correspond to sylla bic beginnings and ends. Thus one could, using the peak and troughs in the sonority cycle, parse the cycle into discrete units-body + coda (e.g., /breil + Ik/) as in the tri partite view, and onset + rime (/brl + leik/) as in the bi partite view. Experimental investigations generally support the bi partite view, in which onsets and rimes are important units in speech processing (MacKay, 1972, 1978; Sternberger, 1983) and working memory (Treiman & Danis, 1988). For example, segments such as syllable-initial consonant clusters appear to be units in naturally occurring (MacKay, 1972) and experimentally induced (MacKay, 1978) speech errors. In addition, the findings of develop mental studies (Kirtley, Bryant, Maclean, & Bradley, 1989; Knafle, 1974; Stanovich, Cunningham, & Cramer, 1984; Treiman, 1985a, 1985b, 1993; Treiman, Zukowski, & Richmond-Welty, 1995) and metalinguistic studies (Cutler, Butterfield, & Williams, 1987; Treiman, 1983, 1984, 1986; Treiman, Salasoo, Slowiaczek, & Pisoni, 1982) support the role of onset and rime units in spoken English. Onset and rime blendings also occur naturally in English; consider the origins of brunch (a meal served be tween breakfast and lunch). Selkirk (1982) further postulated that spoken syllable structure differs as a function of vowel type ("short" [lax] or "long" [tense]) and of following consonant type (sono rant vs. obstruent, coronal vs. noncoronal). Sonorant con sonants have a higher degree of articulatory opening than obstruent consonants do. Vowels, glides (transitional vowel sounds as in the word Ihaus/), liquids (Ill and Ir/), and nasals (lml, Inl, IIJ/) are classified as sonorants. Ob struents (e.g., It!, IdI, /bl, Ip/) are less sonorous because such sounds are made by obstructing the vocal tract. In Selkirk's view, a syllable peak contains two potential po sitions that may be occupied by a short vowel and a sono rant liquid or nasal. Because long vowels occupy both po sitions in the syllable nucleus, any following nasals or liquids must be part of the coda (Fudge, 1969; Selkirk, 1982; Vergnaud & Halle, 1979). Coda membership is lim ited at the most to two consonants. If two consonants oc cupy a syllable's coda, the second must be a coronal con sonant (Selkirk, 1982). Coronals (e.g., It!, Id/, In/) are pronounced with the tip of the tongue turned upward to ward the roof of the mouth. Researchers have tested the predictions of Selkirk's (1982) theory by analyz (...truncated)