THE BODY OF THE BOSS - SUBSYLLABIC UNITS IN THE LEXICAL PROCESSING OF POLYSYLLABIC WORDS

The body of a monosyllabic word (i.e., its vowel plus terminal consonants) has been shown to be an important unit in lexical processing (e.g., the EAD of HEAD). This article attempts to define what the body of a polysyllabic word might be, suggesting that it is the body of the first orthographically defined syllable of the word (the body of its basic orthographic syllabic structure [BOSS], or BOB, e.g., the EAD of MEADOW). Three experiments, testing 60, 96, and 45 university students, respectively, demonstrated that the pronunciation of a nonword is influenced by the pronunciation of the BOB of a preceding word, but not by the pronunciation of its vowel alone or its first phonologically defined syllable. The results of the 3 studies are interpreted as supporting the idea that the BOB is an important unit of lexical processing.