Phonemic repertoire effects in lexical activation

Abstract

Languages differ in the size and makeup of their phonemic repertoire. Phoneme-detection experiments have shown that speakers of languages with large, confusable vowel repertoires (English, Dutch) differ in their expectations of phonetic variability from speakers of languages with small distinct vowel repertoires (Spanish, Japanese). The present study asks whether these different expectations also constrain the activation of spoken words, via two word reconstruction experiments, in which listeners reconstruct from nonwords (e.g., eltimate) a real word by changing just one phoneme (ultimate, estimate). Dutch listeners responded significantly faster and made fewer errors when required to change vowels as opposed to consonants; when allowed to change any phoneme, they altered vowels significantly more often than consonants, and vowel responses were made more rapidly than consonant responses. This suggests that for these listeners, vowel information constrains lexical activation less tightly (allows more potential alternative candidates) than consonant information. In a language with few, distinct vowels, however, this weaker constraint of vowel information on lexical activation is not found: Spanish subjects, in the same task, responded equally rapidly and accurately whether required to alter vowels or consonants; when allowed to change any phoneme, they marginally preferred to alter consonants rather than vowels.