When does inconsistency hurt? On the relation between phonological consistency effects and the reliability of...

Phonological consistency describes to what extent a letter string in one word is pronounced equally in other words. Phonological reliability describes to what extent a sublexical unit is usually consistent throughout a language. The relationship between the two concepts was investigated by comparing five sublexical units (onset-consonants, vowel, end-consonants, and the concatenation of the vowel with begin- or end-consonants) in Dutch and English with respect to their reliability and to how their consistency was related to naming errors and latencies. In a regression analysis, naming latencies and errors on genuine Dutch words (consistent) and imported words (inconsistent) were predicted by the phonological consistency of the five units. The same was done for two sets of English naming data. Consistency had a much stronger effect in Dutch than in English naming studies when all five units were considered. The special role of the vowel plus end-consonants, which has been found in English naming data, could not be demonstrated in Dutch. In both languages, the size of consistency effects mirrors the reliability of the five units.