Universal Restrictions on Syllable Structure: Evidence From Mandarin Chinese

Across languages, certain onset clusters are systematically preferred (e.g., [Formula: see text], "[Formula: see text]" indicates preference), and speakers extend these preferences even to onsets that are unattested in their language. All such demonstrations, however, come from cluster-rich languages, so the observed preferences could reflect not universal linguistic restrictions but lexical analogy. To address this possibility, here, we turn to Mandarin Chinese-a cluster-poor language. We reasoned that, if people are sensitive to the onset hierarchy, then they should repair ill-formed onsets as better-formed ones [Formula: see text]-the worse formed the onset, the more likely its repair, hence, its misidentification. Results were consistent with this hypothesis, and they obtained irrespective of participants' experience with their second language (English). Nonetheless, the effect of syllable structure was strongly modulated by phonetic cues and task demands. These findings suggest that speakers might share broad phonological restrictions, but phonetic factors play a major role in their detection.