Lexical representation and processing of word-initial morphological alternations: Scottish Gaelic mutation
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Authors
Ussishkin, Adam
Warner, Natasha
Clayton, Ian
Brenner, Dan
Carnie, Andrew
Hammond, Michael
Fisher, Muriel
Issue Date
2017
Type
Article
Language
en_US
Keywords
morphophonology , spoken word recognition , Gaelic
Alternative Title
Abstract
When hearing speech, listeners begin recognizing words before reaching the end of the word. Therefore, early sounds impact spoken word recognition before sounds later in the word. In languages like English, most morphophonological alternations affect the ends of words, but in some languages, morphophonology can alter the early sounds of a word. Scottish Gaelic, an endangered language, has a pattern of 'initial consonant mutation' that changes initial consonants: Pog 'kiss' begins with [ph], but phog 'kissed' begins with [f]. This raises questions both of how listeners process words that might begin with a mutated consonant during spoken word recognition, and how listeners relate the mutated and unmutated forms to each other in the lexicon. We present three experiments to investigate these questions. A priming experiment shows that native speakers link the mutated and unmutated forms in the lexicon. A gating experiment shows that Gaelic listeners usually do not consider mutated forms as candidates during lexical recognition until there is enough evidence to force that interpretation. However, a phonetic identification experiment confirms that listeners can identify the mutated sounds correctly. Together, these experiments contribute to our understanding of how speakers represent and process a language with morphophonological alternations at word onset.
Description
Citation
Ussishkin, A., Warner, N., Clayton, I., Brenner, D., Carnie, A., Hammond, M., & Fisher, M. (2017). Lexical representation and processing of word-initial morphological alternations: Scottish Gaelic mutation. Laboratory Phonology, 8(1), 8. doi:10.5334/labphon.22
Publisher
Laboratory Phonology
License
Attribution 4.0 International
Journal
Volume
Issue
PubMed ID
ISSN
1868-6346