Segmentation by lexical subtraction in Hungarian speakers of second-language English.

Using cross-modal form priming, we compared the use of stress and lexicality in the segmentation of spoken English by native English speakers (L1) and by native Hungarian speakers of second-language English (L2). For both language groups, lexicality was found to be an effective segmentation cue. That is, spoken disyllabic word fragments were stronger primes in a subsequent visual word recognition task when preceded by meaningful words than when preceded by nonwords: For example, the first two syllables of corridor were a more effective prime for visually presented corridor when heard in the phrase anythingcorri than in imoshingcorri.

Effects of syntactic expectations on speech segmentation.

Although the effect of acoustic cues on speech segmentation has been extensively investigated, the role of higher order information (e.g., syntax) has received less attention.

Sentential, lexical, and acoustic effects on the perception of word boundaries.

This study investigates the effects of sentential context, lexical knowledge, and acoustic cues on the segmentation of connected speech. Listeners heard near-homophonous phrases (e.g.

How do syllables contribute to the perception of spoken English? insight from the migration paradigm.

The involvement of syllables in the perception of spoken English has traditionally been regarded as minimal because of ambiguous syllable boundaries and overriding rhythmic segmentation cues. The present experiments test the perceptual separability of syllables and vowels in spoken English using the migration paradigm. Experiments 1 and 2 show that syllables migrate considerably more than full and reduced vowels, and this effect is not influenced by the lexicality of the stimuli, their stress pattern, or the syllables' position relative to the edge of the stimuli.

Integration of multiple speech segmentation cues: a hierarchical framework.

A central question in psycholinguistic research is how listeners isolate words from connected speech despite the paucity of clear word-boundary cues in the signal. A large body of empirical evidence indicates that word segmentation is promoted by both lexical (knowledge-derived) and sublexical (signal-derived) cues. However, an account of how these cues operate in combination or in conflict is lacking.

Detecting silent pauses in speech: a new tool for measuring on-line lexical and semantic processing.

In this study, we introduce pause detection (PD) as a new tool for studying the on-line integration of lexical and semantic information during speech comprehension. When listeners were asked to detect 200-ms pauses inserted into the last words of spoken sentences, their detection latencies were influenced by the lexical-semantic information provided by the sentences. Listeners took longer to detect a pause when it was inserted within a word that had multiple potential endings, rather than a unique ending, in the context of the sentence.