Syllabic Strategy as Opposed to Coda Optimization in the Segmentation of Spanish Letter-Strings Using Word Spotting

Abstract

ABSTRACTA word-spotting task is used in Spanish to test the way in which polysyllabic letter-strings are parsed in this language. Monosyllabic words (e.g., bar) embedded at the beginning of a pseudoword were immediately followed by either a coda-forming consonant (e.g., barto) or a vowel (e.g., baros). In the former case, the embedded word corresponds to the first spoken syllable, whereas it cuts across the syllable boundary in the latter case. Unlike a previous study in English using the same methodology (Taft & Álvarez, 2014), the embedded word was found to be easier to detect when followed by a consonant than a vowel, at least for low-frequency words. It was concluded that phonological recoding is more important in the parsing of Spanish words than English words, where maximization of the coda dominates instead.