Haskins Publications

Number	852
Year	1993
Drawer	16
Entry Date	07/20/1998
Authors	Fowler, Carol A., Treiman, Rebecca, and Gross, Jennifer.
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Publication	Journal of Memory and Language, 32, 115-140.
url	http://www.haskins.yale.edu/Reprints/HL0852.pdf
Abstract	A series of experiments was carried out to explore the structure of monosyllabic, disyllabic, and trisyllabic words and nonwords. In most of the experiments, we used a phoneme shift task with visually presented stimuli to compare the speech with which hypothetical constituents could be extracted from one item and substituted into another. When constituents of the syllable and of the stimulus as a while were confounded in monosyllables, evidence of an onset/rime or onset/remainder structure was obtained. In addition, initial clusters beginning with /s/ were less cohesive than other initial clusters. When constituents of the syllable and of the entire stimulus were unconfounded in disyllables, no influences of syllable structure was evident. Finally, when edge effect were eliminated by focusing on the middle syllables of trisyllables, effects of syllable structure emerged. These syllable-structure effects appeared with the phoneme shift task and with an unspeeded task involving auditory stimulus presentation. The results suggest that both word structure and syllable structure characterize spoken words.
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