Journal Article

(A)symmetry in vowel features in verbs and pseudoverbs: ERP evidence

Abstract

This paper examines the processing of height and place contrasts in vowels in words and pseudowords, using mismatch negativity (MMN) to determine firstly whether asymmetries resulting from underlying representations found in the processing of vowels in isolation will remain in a word context and secondly whether there is any difference in the way these phonological differences manifest in pseudowords. The stimuli are two sets of English ablaut verbs and corresponding pseudowords (sit~sat/*sif~*saf and get~got/*gef~*gof) contrasting in vowel height ([HIGH] vs. [LOW]) and place of articulation ([CORONAL] vs. [DORSAL]). In line with previous research, the results show a processing asymmetry for place of articulation in both words and nonwords, while different vowel heights result in symmetrical MMN patterns. These findings confirm that an underspecification account provides the best explanation for featural processing and that phonological information is independent of lexical status.

Attached files

Authors

Kotzor, Sandra
Zhou, Beinan
Lahiri, Aditi

Oxford Brookes departments

School of Education

Dates

Year of publication: 2020
Date of RADAR deposit: 2020-07-20

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This work is licensed under a Creative Commons Attribution-NonCommercial-NoDerivatives 4.0 International License

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Related resources

This RADAR resource is the Accepted Manuscript of (A)symmetry in vowel features in verbs and pseudoverbs: ERP evidence