Segmentation cues in lexical identification and in lexical acquisition: same or different?

This study investigates how French listeners exploit phonological and phonetic cues in segmenting continuous speech into words. We examined how these listeners integrate multiple sources of information not only in lexical identification, using the cross-modal priming paradigm, but also in the storage of new lexical representations, using an artificial language learning task. Results showed that the specific segmentation cues examined contributed differently to the performance of these two tasks. Syllable onsets, simultaneously cued by allophonic variations and phonotactics, played a predominant role in lexical identification while stress was only a “last-resort” segmentation cue. In contrast, rhythmic information, particularly primary stress, played a greater role in lexical acquisition than syllable onsets which were not used. These results suggest that segmentation cues contribute differently to these two processes and that caution is therefore required in relating results on lexical acquisition and lexical identification.