Lexical representation and processing of word-initial morphological alternations: Scottish Gaelic mutation

Adam Ussishkin,Andrew Carnie,Muriel Fisher,Natasha Warner,Michael Hammond,Daniel Brenner,Ian Clayton

doi:10.5334/labphon.22

Adam Ussishkin, Andrew Carnie + Show 5 more

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https://doi.org/10.5334/labphon.22

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Abstract

When hearing speech, listeners begin recognizing words before reaching the end of the word. Therefore, early sounds impact spoken word recognition before sounds later in the word. In languages like English, most morphophonological alternations affect the ends of words, but in some languages, morphophonology can alter the early sounds of a word. Scottish Gaelic, an endangered language, has a pattern of ‘initial consonant mutation’ that changes initial consonants: Pog ‘kiss’ begins with [ph], but phog ‘kissed’ begins with [f]. This raises questions both of how listeners process words that might begin with a mutated consonant during spoken word recognition, and how listeners relate the mutated and unmutated forms to each other in the lexicon. We present three experiments to investigate these questions. A priming experiment shows that native speakers link the mutated and unmutated forms in the lexicon. A gating experiment shows that Gaelic listeners usually do not consider mutated forms as candidates during lexical recognition until there is enough evidence to force that interpretation. However, a phonetic identification experiment confirms that listeners can identify the mutated sounds correctly. Together, these experiments contribute to our understanding of how speakers represent and process a language with morphophonological alternations at word onset.

Highlights

This paper explores how a morphophonological alternation in Scottish Gaelic known as initial consonant mutation affects speakers’ lexical representation and listeners’ processing of morphologically related word forms
These results are consistent with the hypothesis that the mutated form of a verb facilitates lexical access to its unmutated counterpart, and that this facilitation effect cannot be due solely to phonological overlap between two verbs related by initial consonant mutation
When listeners hear a sound that could be a mutated consonant, do they assume it is the result of mutation? When listeners are hearing Scottish Gaelic connected speech, do they consider mutation forms of words as possible words immediately in the spoken word recognition process, to words that are not the result of mutation? To address these questions, we turn to a gating task

Summary

Introduction

This paper explores how a morphophonological alternation in Scottish Gaelic known as initial consonant mutation affects speakers’ lexical representation and listeners’ processing of morphologically related word forms This alternation is very different from those found in better-studied languages, such as English, in that it affects the beginning rather than the end of the word, and poses a challenge for theoretical models that depend crucially upon the word onset as a primary factor in word recognition. The last author, Fisher, is a native speaker of Gaelic from Skye who teaches language courses at Sabhal Mòr Ostaig Through her knowledge of the community, our group was able to test relatively large numbers of fluent L1 speakers who are literate in Gaelic. This allowed us to perform experiments on spoken word recognition on this language, with its typologically rare morphology

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