The Effect of Markedness in Phonotactic Speech segmentation

Abstract

People use language-specific phonotactic constraints in the segmentation of continuous speech. They are likewise sensitive to the markedness of consonant clusters; marked unattested clusters cause greater perceptual illusions than lesser marked unattested clusters. However, does the degree of markedness play a role in the segmentation process? Are marked clusters segmented faster than lesser marked clusters? Additionally a detailed typological analysis is provided in order to explain why such an effect might be present. Two experiments were conducted, of which the results suggest that the role of markedness might be too small to provide any consistent results.