Two perspectives on similarity between words

Abstract

This presentation examines the similarity between words from both bottom up (phonetic) and top down (phonological/psycholinguistic) perspectives. From the phonological perspective, the influence of structure on similarity is explored using metalinguistic acceptability judgments for multisyllabic nonwords. Results from an experiment suggest that subjects try to align novel words with known words in order to maximize similarities while minimizing dissimilarities. This finding parallels results from psychology on similarity judgments for visual scenes. From the phonetic perspective, the influence of similar gestures on speech error rates is examined using ultrasound measurement of tongue position. In a pilot experiment, subjects, produced tongue twisters containing words where onset and vowel phonemes had similar gestures (e.g., tip, comb) and where the onset and vowel had dissimilar gestures (e.g., tube, keep). Preliminary results suggest that misarticulations are more frequent in the context of dissimilar gestures (e.g., in the tongue twister tip cape keep tape, error rates are higher for /k/ than /t/). These errors appear to be gestural interactions rather than errors at the phonemic or featural level of phonological spellout. Together, these two experiments indicate that similarity relations between words are found at multiple levels, any which are potentially relevant to the structure of phonological systems.