Lexical Segmentation in Artificial Word Learning: The Effects of Converging Sublexical Cues

Abstract

This study examines how French listeners segment and learn new words of artificial languages varying in the presence of different combinations of sublexical segmentation cues. The first experiment investigated the contribution of three different types of sublexical cues (acoustic-phonetic, phonological and prosodic cues) to word learning. The second experiment explored how participants specifically exploited sublexical prosodic cues. Whereas complementary cues signaling word-initial and word-final boundaries had synergistic effects on word learning in the first experiment, the two manipulated prosodic cues redundantly signaling word-final boundaries in the second experiment were rank-ordered with final pitch variations being more weighted than final lengthening. These results are discussed in light of the notions of cue type, cue position and cue efficiency.

The use of tonal coarticulation in segmentation of artificial language speech: A study with Mandarin listeners

“…The consequence is that the congruence between the TP and tonal cues does not yield an extra gain in segmentation performance for Mandarin listeners. Comparable findings have been reported in previous studies with F0 and lengthening cues (e.g., Bagou & Frauenfelder, 2018;Kim et al, 2012). Nevertheless, the redundancy hypothesis needs to be reconciled with the findings of Fernandes et al (2007), who show that, as mentioned, segmental coarticulation in agreement with TPs leads to extra facilitation when compared with TP information alone.…”

“…Higher TPs between adjacent syllables within an AL word already signal that a boundary between them is unlikely and there might be no need for conveying similar information via tonal coarticulation. Such a cue redundancy hypothesis may lead one to expect no significant difference in the listeners' accuracy between the single-cue and congruent-cues conditions (as in the case with the final lengthening and F0 rise in Bagou & Frauenfelder, 2018;Kim et al, 2012). However, the lack of a significant effect of cue congruence could potentially be attributed to a confounding factor: cue reliability.…”

“…Yet, cooperating cues may be redundant and may not produce extra facilitation. Bagou and Frauenfelder (2018) and Kim et al (2012) showed that although French and Korean listeners benefited from final lengthening and final F0 rise in isolation, conjoining these two prosodic cues does not improve their performance further. The other scenario is when cues operate in conflict and there are again two possible outcomes.…”

“…With these two scenarios in mind, we investigated the use of tonal carryover assimilation with the AL learning technique. It is an experimental paradigm that has been widely adopted to explore how phonological patterns and acousticphonetic details guide segmentation (e.g., Bagou & Frauenfelder, 2018;Fernandes et al, 2007;Kim et al, 2012;Ordin & Nespor, 2016;Ordin et al, 2017;Toro, Pons, Bion, & Sebastián-Gallés, 2011;Tremblay et al, 2019;Tyler & Cutler, 2009). A typical AL learning experiment has a learning (or exposure) phase followed by a test phase.…”

Are Prosodic Variants Stored in the French Mental Lexicon?

“…Other studies have shown that French speakers use the presence/absence of stress to segment continuous speech stream into words (Bagou & Frauenfelder, 2018;Christophe, Peperkamp, Pallier, Block, & Mehler, 2004; see also Spinelli, Welby & Schaegis, 2007;Spinelli, Grimault, Meunier & Welby, 2010 for secondary stress). Christophe et al (2004), asked participants to detect a target word (e.g.…”