Assimilation in existing and novel German compounds

Gumnior, H., Zwitserlood, P., & Bölte, J.

Forschungsartikel (Zeitschrift) | Peer reviewed

Zusammenfassung

Place assimilation is a phonologically regular variation that modifies the surface form of words: Coronal consonants can change their place of articulation ( e. g., rainbow -> raimbow). These variations do not seem to disturb lexical access as long as the change is licensed by the following phonemic context ( Coenen, Zwitserlood, & Bolte, 2001; Gaskell & Marslen-Wilson, 1996). This study compares the listeners' tolerance to contextually appropriate ( bahngleis) and inappropriate changes ( bahmgleis) in existing ( bahngleis; railway track) and novel German compounds ( bahngeist; railway ghost). The results from two cross-modal form priming experiments reveal that listeners showed equal tolerance for contextually appropriate changes that actually occur in language and for inappropriate changes that are never produced in the context presented. This pattern held for existing and novel compounds. Our findings suggest that word form representations for possible phonemic variants of morphologically complex words are not listed in the lexicon.

Details zur Publikation

FachzeitschriftLanguage and Cognitive Processes
Jahrgang / Bandnr. / Volume20
Ausgabe / Heftnr. / Issue3
Seitenbereich465-488
StatusVeröffentlicht
Veröffentlichungsjahr2005 (30.06.2005)
Sprache, in der die Publikation verfasst istEnglisch
DOI10.1080/01690960444002174
Stichwörterspoken word-recognition lexical access speech-perception phonological variation representation inference

Autor*innen der Universität Münster

Bölte, Jens
Professur für Psycholinguistik und kognitive Neurowissenschaft (Prof. Zwitserlood)
Zwitserlood, Pienie
Professur für Psycholinguistik und kognitive Neurowissenschaft (Prof. Zwitserlood)