Cross-linguistic approaches to lexical segmentation

Abstract

This paper examines the problem of lexical segmentation in order to identify language-specific and language-independent properties of lexical processing systems. A potential universal of lexical segmentation is first evaluated for its efficacy across languages. This postlexical segmentation strategy assumes that listeners recognize each word rapidly enough to be able to predict both its offset and the onset of the following word. It is argued that this strategy cannot account for every lexical segmentation decision in utterances in any language. Listeners must also use other types of segmentation information. Two types of segmentation information, distributional and relational, which appear to vary crosslinguistically, are presented with examples. To exploit this information, listeners must infer word boundaries or boundaries of other domains from events or sequences of events in the signal. The problem posed for current models of spoken word recognition by the integration of such segmentation information with that from the putative postlexical strategy is discussed. © 1985, Mouton Publishers.