The predominance of strong initial syllables in the English vocabulary. Cutler, A. & Carter, D. M. Computer Speech & Language, 2(3–4):133 - 142, 1987. doi abstract bibtex Studies of human speech processing have provided evidece for a segmentation strategy in the perception of continuous speech, whereby a word boundary is postulated, and a lexical access procedure initiated, at each metrically strong syllable. The likely success of this strategy was here estimated against the characteristics of the English vocabulary. Two computerized dictionaries were found to list approximately three times as many words beginning with strong syllables (i.e. syllables containing a full vowel) as beginning with weak syllables (i.e. syllables containing a reduced vowel). Consideration of frequency of lexical word occurrence reveals that words beginning with strong syllables occur on average more often than words beginning with weak syllables. Together, these findings motivate an estimate for everyday speech recognition that approximately 85% of lexical words (i.e. excluding function words) will begin with strong syllables. This estimate was tested against a corpus of 190 000 words of spontaneous British English conversion. In this corpus, 90% of lexical words were found to begin with strong syllables. This suggests that a strategy of postulating word boundaries at the onset of strong syllables would have a high success rate in that few actual lexical word onsets would be missed.
@Article{Cutler1987,
author = {Anne Cutler and David M. Carter},
journal = {Computer Speech \& Language},
title = {The predominance of strong initial syllables in the English vocabulary},
year = {1987},
issn = {0885-2308},
number = {3--4},
pages = {133 - 142},
volume = {2},
abstract = {Studies of human speech processing have provided evidece for a segmentation
strategy in the perception of continuous speech, whereby a word boundary
is postulated, and a lexical access procedure initiated, at each
metrically strong syllable. The likely success of this strategy was
here estimated against the characteristics of the English vocabulary.
Two computerized dictionaries were found to list approximately three
times as many words beginning with strong syllables (i.e. syllables
containing a full vowel) as beginning with weak syllables (i.e. syllables
containing a reduced vowel). Consideration of frequency of lexical
word occurrence reveals that words beginning with strong syllables
occur on average more often than words beginning with weak syllables.
Together, these findings motivate an estimate for everyday speech
recognition that approximately 85% of lexical words (i.e. excluding
function words) will begin with strong syllables. This estimate was
tested against a corpus of 190 000 words of spontaneous British English
conversion. In this corpus, 90% of lexical words were found to begin
with strong syllables. This suggests that a strategy of postulating
word boundaries at the onset of strong syllables would have a high
success rate in that few actual lexical word onsets would be missed.},
doi = {10.1016/0885-2308(87)90004-0},
}
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