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 [kdm(1)] in the nonsense sound strings that attached with a single consonant [tkdm(1)] than in the nonsense sound strings that attached either with a vowel [a:kdm(1)] or a pseudo-syllable [khow(1)kdm(1)]. Finally, the current set of results further supported that the PWC appears to be a language-universal mechanism in segmenting continuous speech.