On metrical patterns and lexical parsing in French

Abstract

Previous research suggested that rhythmic expectations could play a role in languages contrasting stressed syllables with unstressed ones, whereas languages without such a contrast and with a clear syllabic structure, such as French, would be processed according to a syllable-based procedure. Lexical parsing of bisyllabic words composed of two monosyllabic words are studied. Two experiments examine the effects of usual and reverse metrical patterns on segmentation. The usual iambic pattern produces, more often than not, recognition of bisyllables whereas lexical parsing is not influenced by monosyllable frequency and syllabic structure. The trochaïc pattern strongly increases the amount of segmentation. In Experiment 2, focusing subjects' attention on the timing structure strengthens these effects. Consequently, French subjects use a metrical segmentation strategy. By contrast, the processing of spondees (Experiment 3) shows an effect of structural parameters on parsing and suggests the use of a syllable-based segmentation procedure when rhythmic information is absent. Implications for speech recognition models are discussed.