D.P. (Daan) van Soeren, MA
Research interests
This project investigates whether lexical stress is a relevant factor in the distribution of phonemes. We compared the distribution of consonants in Spanish, English and Dutch words that start with either a stressed or an unstressed syllable, and the results undeniably show different distributional patterns for the two word types.
Columbia School Phonology (Diver 2012) uses the concept of word recognition to explain distributional patterns, and the explanation of our results is based on the premise that stress information from the first syllable of a word facilitates word recognition in Spanish, English and Dutch. There is empirical evidence supporting this claim for English and Dutch (Cooper, Cutler & Wales 2002; Van Heuven 1988), but but not for Spanish yet.
Therefore, as a next step in this project, we will carry out an adjusted replication of the Spanish word recognition experiment in Soto-Faraco, Sebastián-Gallés and Cutler (2001), in which the disyllabic primes will be replaced with monosyllabic primes.