The Effect of Sonority on Word Segmentation: Evidence for a Phonological Universal
Marc Ettlinger, Amy S. Finn, Carla L. Hudson Kam · UC Berkeley Phonology Lab Annual Reports · 2007
It has been well documented that language specific cues-such as transitional probability (TP), stress and phonotactics-can be used for word segmentation.In our current work, we investigate what role a phonological universal, the sonority sequencing principle (SSP), may also play.Participants were presented with an unsegmented stream of speech from an artificial language with non-English onset phonotactics that pitted adherence to the SSP against TP.The participants favored using the SSP over TP in assessing wordhood, suggesting that the SSP may be used by language learners for word segmentation.Importantly, the SSP can be used absent any language experience and represents a new, potentially powerful cue for word segmentation that is grounded in phonological theory.