Phonotactic probability refers to the frequency with which phonological segments and sequences of phonological segments occur in words in a given language. We describe one method of estimating phonotactic probabilities based on words in American English. These estimates of phonotactic probability have been used in a number of previous studies and are now being made available to other researchers via a Web-based interface. Instructions for using the interface, as well as details regarding how the measures were derived, are provided in the present article. The Phonotactic Probability Calculator can be accessed at http://www.people.ku.edu/-mvitevit/PhonoProbHome.html.
Download full-text PDF |
Source |
|---|---|
| http://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pmc/articles/PMC2553700 | PMC |
| http://dx.doi.org/10.3758/bf03195594 | DOI Listing |
Publication Analysis
Top Keywords
Similar Publications
English-learning infants developing sensitivity to vowel phonotactic cues to word segmentation.
Dev Sci
November 2024
Department of Linguistics, UCLA, Los Angeles, California, USA.
Previous research has shown that when domain-general transitional probability (TP) cues to word segmentation are in conflict with language-specific stress cues, English-learning 5- and 7-month-olds rely on TP, whereas 9-month-olds rely on stress. In two artificial languages, we evaluated English-learning infants' sensitivity to TP cues to word segmentation vis-a-vis language-specific vowel phonotactic (VP) cues-English words do not end in lax vowels. These cues were either consistent or conflicting.
View Article and Find Full Text PDFWord Forms Reflect Trade-Offs Between Speaker Effort and Robust Listener Recognition.
Cogn Sci
July 2024
Departments of Psychology and Computer Science, Princeton University.
Article Synopsis
- This study explores how cognitive pressures influence the vocabulary of natural languages, focusing on George Kingsley Zipf's "law of abbreviation."
- It introduces a framework that balances speakers' desire for brevity with the need for unique word forms to ensure listeners can recognize them easily.
- The research uses phonotactic probability to measure speech production effort, finding that it correlates more with word frequency than length and highlights a trade-off between production ease and perceptual clarity.
Short-term exposure alters adult listeners' perception of segmental phonotactics.
JASA Express Lett
December 2023
Linguistics, University of California, Los Angeles, California 90095,
This study evaluates the malleability of adults' perception of probabilistic phonotactic (biphone) probabilities, building on a body of literature on statistical phonotactic learning. It was first replicated that listeners categorize phonetic continua as sounds that create higher-probability sequences in their native language. Listeners were also exposed to skewed distributions of biphone contexts, which resulted in the enhancement or reversal of these effects.
View Article and Find Full Text PDFI remembered the chorm! Word learning abilities of children with and without phonological impairment.
Int J Lang Commun Disord
May 2024
The University of Sydney, Camperdown, NSW, Australia.
Background: Children with phonological impairment present with pattern-based errors in their speech production. While some children have difficulties with speech perception and/or the establishment of robust underlying phonological representations, the nature of phonological impairment in children is still not well understood. Given that phonological and lexical development are closely linked, one way to better understand the nature of the problem in phonological impairment is to examine word learning abilities in children.
View Article and Find Full Text PDFAssessing the size of non-Māori-speakers' active Māori lexicon.
PLoS One
August 2023
New Zealand Institute of Language, Brain and Behaviour, NZILBB, University of Canterbury, Christchurch, New Zealand.
Most non-Māori-speaking New Zealanders are regularly exposed to Māori throughout their lives without seeming to build any extensive Māori lexicon; at best, they know a small number of words which are frequently used and sometimes borrowed into English. Here, we ask how many Māori words non-Māori-speaking New Zealanders know, in two ways: how many can they identify as real Māori words, and how many can they actively define? We show that non-Māori-speaking New Zealanders can readily identify many more Māori words than they can define, and that the number of words they can reliably define is quite small. This result adds crucial support to the idea presented in earlier work that non-Māori-speaking New Zealanders have implicit form-based (proto-lexical) knowledge of many Māori words, but explicit semantic (lexical) knowledge of few.
View Article and Find Full Text PDFWant AI Summaries of new PubMed Abstracts delivered to your In-box?
Enter search terms and have AI summaries delivered each week - change queries or unsubscribe any time!