Possible-Word Constraints in Cantonese Speech Segmentation

A Cantonese syllable-spotting experiment was conducted to examine whether the Possible-Word Constraint (PWC), proposed by Norris, McQueen, Cutler, and Butterfield (1997), can apply in Cantonese speech segmentation. In the experiment, listeners were asked to spot out the target Cantonese syllable from a series of nonsense sound strings. Results suggested that listeners found it more difficult to spot out the target syllable kDm1] in the nonsense sound strings that attached with a single consonant tkDm1] than in the nonsense sound strings that attached either with a vowel a:kDm1] or a pseudo-syllable khow1kDm1]. Finally, the current set of results further supported that the PWC appears to be a language-universal mechanism in segmenting continuous speech.