Perceiving word structure in time: cross-linguistic evidence from English and Spanish

Patterns of durational variation can offer rich phonetic cues to word structure, such as the number of syllables a word contains, or its morphological structure. In this study, we examine two types of durational cues: direct phonetic cues, which reflect phonological features, such as syllable count, and ancillary morphophonetic cues, which reflect phonological features triggered by morphological processes, such as suffixation. For direct phonetic cues, we focus on polysyllabic shortening, a pattern by which adding additional syllables to a stem (e.g., cart → carton) will shorten the duration of the initial syllable. For ancillary morphophonetic cues, we focus on segmental compression, a pattern by which adding a non-syllabic segment, such as a plural suffix, to a syllable coda (e.g., cart → carts) shortens segment durations in the syllable. In two visual world eye-tracking experiments, we ask whether listeners' use of these cues in speech perception depends on (a) immediate morphosyntactic context of the word, (b) broader morphosyntactic features of the language, and (c) listeners' bilingual language experience. Experiment 1, in English, reveals that English-speaking listeners use both types of cues, and further, that morphosyntactic context modulates listeners' use of ancillary morphophonetic cues. Experiment 2 examines ancillary morphophonetic cues in Spanish, a language whose morphosyntax employs substantially more agreement than English. The results for Experiment 2 reveal that Spanish-speaking listeners, regardless of English experience, are more sensitive than English-speaking listeners to ancillary morphophonetic cues. These findings suggest that listeners' use of ancillary morphophonetic cues reflects general perceptual processes, modulated by the role of these cues in their language's grammar.