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Data from Russian Help to Determine in Which Languages the Possible Word Constraint Applies.
Svetlana Alexeeva1, Anastasia Frolova1, Natalia Slioussar2,3
1Department of Liberal Arts and Sciences, St. Petersburg State University, St. Petersburg, Russia.
Journal of Psycholinguistic Research
|November 18, 2016
Summary
The Possible Word Constraint (PWC) may not apply to languages with vowel-less words. Experiments on Russian, which allows such words, contradict the PWC, suggesting it
Area of Science:
- Linguistics
- Phonology
- Speech Segmentation
Background:
- The Possible Word Constraint (PWC) is a speech segmentation principle.
- It posits that word boundaries are not formed if the remaining segment consists solely of consonants.
- The PWC was initially proposed for English and assumed to be universal.
Purpose of the Study:
- To investigate the universality of the PWC in languages that permit vowel-less words.
- To test the PWC's applicability in Russian, a language with one-consonant words and flexible stress.
Main Methods:
- Analysis of speech segmentation principles.
- Conducting two word-spotting experiments on Russian speakers.
- Comparing results with existing data from Slovak and Tarifiyt Berber.
Main Results:
- Data from Slovak supported the PWC, potentially due to fixed word stress.
- Data from Tarifiyt Berber did not support the PWC.
- Russian word-spotting experiments contradicted the PWC.
Conclusions:
- The PWC does not appear to operate in languages where words without vowels are permissible.
- The PWC's validity might be influenced by language-specific prosodic properties, such as fixed word stress in Slovak.
- Further research is needed to understand cross-linguistic variations in speech segmentation principles.
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