Ambiguity and Competition in Lexical Segmentation

Earlier research has suggested that left embedded words (e.g. cat in catalog) present a problem for spoken word recognition since it is potentially unclear whether there is a word boundary at the offset of cat. Models of spoken word recognition have incorporated processes of competition so that the identification of embedded words can be delayed until longer interpretations have been ruled out. However, evidence from acoustic phonetics has previously shown that there are differences in acoustic duration between the syllables of embedded words and the onsets of longer competitors. The research reported here used gating and cross-modal priming to investigate the recognition of embedded words. Results indicate that subjects use these acoustic differences to discriminate between monosyllabic words and the onset of longer words. We therefore suggest that on-line processes of lexical segmentation and word recognition are sensitive to acoustic information, such as syllable duration, that may only be contrastive with reference to prior spoken context.