From the Cover: Phonological typicality influences on-line sentence comprehension. Export

@article{citeulike:800967, abstract = {Since Saussure, the relationship between the sound and the meaning of words has been regarded as largely arbitrary. Here, however, we show that a probabilistic relationship exists between the sound of a word and its lexical category. Corpus analyses of nouns and verbs indicate that the phonological properties of the individual words in these two lexical categories form relatively separate and coherent clusters, with some nouns sounding more typical of the noun category than others and likewise for verbs. Additional analyses reveal that the phonological properties of nouns and verbs affect lexical access, and we also demonstrate the influence of such properties during the on-line processing of both simple unambiguous and syntactically ambiguous sentences. Thus, although the sound of a word may not provide cues to its specific meaning, phonological typicality, the degree to which the sound properties of an individual word are typical of other words in its lexical category, affects both word- and sentence-level language processing. The findings are consistent with a perspective on language comprehension in which sensitivity to multiple syntactic constraints in adulthood emerges as a product of language-development processes that are driven by the integration of multiple cues to linguistic structure, including phonological typicality.}, address = {*Department of Psychology, Cornell University, Uris Hall, Ithaca, NY 14853.}, author = {Farmer, T. A. and Christiansen, M. H. and Monaghan, P.}, citeulike-article-id = {800967}, citeulike-linkout-0 = {http://dx.doi.org/10.1073/pnas.0602173103}, citeulike-linkout-1 = {http://www.pnas.org/cgi/content/abstract/103/32/12203}, citeulike-linkout-2 = {http://view.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pubmed/16882728}, citeulike-linkout-3 = {http://www.hubmed.org/display.cgi?uids=16882728}, day = {8}, doi = {10.1073/pnas.0602173103}, issn = {0027-8424}, journal = {Proc Natl Acad Sci U S A}, keywords = {corpus, phonology, psycholinguistics, saussure, sentence\_processing, typicality}, month = {August}, number = {32}, pages = {12203--12208}, posted-at = {2006-08-14 16:29:54}, priority = {0}, title = {From the Cover: Phonological typicality influences on-line sentence comprehension.}, url = {http://dx.doi.org/10.1073/pnas.0602173103}, volume = {103}, year = {2006} }

TY - JOUR ID - citeulike:800967 L3 - citeulike-article-id:800967 N2 - Since Saussure, the relationship between the sound and the meaning of words has been regarded as largely arbitrary. Here, however, we show that a probabilistic relationship exists between the sound of a word and its lexical category. Corpus analyses of nouns and verbs indicate that the phonological properties of the individual words in these two lexical categories form relatively separate and coherent clusters, with some nouns sounding more typical of the noun category than others and likewise for verbs. Additional analyses reveal that the phonological properties of nouns and verbs affect lexical access, and we also demonstrate the influence of such properties during the on-line processing of both simple unambiguous and syntactically ambiguous sentences. Thus, although the sound of a word may not provide cues to its specific meaning, phonological typicality, the degree to which the sound properties of an individual word are typical of other words in its lexical category, affects both word- and sentence-level language processing. The findings are consistent with a perspective on language comprehension in which sensitivity to multiple syntactic constraints in adulthood emerges as a product of language-development processes that are driven by the integration of multiple cues to linguistic structure, including phonological typicality. IS - 32 JF - Proc Natl Acad Sci U S A SN - 0027-8424 AD - *Department of Psychology, Cornell University, Uris Hall, Ithaca, NY 14853. EP - 12208 TI - From the Cover: Phonological typicality influences on-line sentence comprehension. VL - 103 SP - 12203 KW - corpus KW - phonology KW - psycholinguistics KW - saussure KW - sentence_processing KW - typicality AU - Farmer, TA AU - Christiansen, MH AU - Monaghan, P PY - 2006/08/08/ UR - http://dx.doi.org/10.1073/pnas.0602173103 ER -