Cut(n) andcut(v) are not homophones: Lemma frequency affects the duration of noun–verb conversion pairs

Abstract

This paper tests whether lemma frequency impacts the duration of homographic noun–verb homophones in spontaneous speech, e.g. cut (n)/cut (v). In earlier research on effects of lemma frequency (e.g. Gahl 2008), these pairs of words were not investigated due to a focus on heterographic homophones. Theories of the mental lexicon in both linguistics and psycholinguistics differ as to whether these word pairs are assumed to have shared or separate lexical representations. An empirical analysis based on spontaneous speech from the Buckeye corpus (Pitt et al. 2007) yields the result that differences in lemma frequency affect the duration of the N/V pairs under investigation. First, this finding provides evidence for N/V pairs having separate representations and thus supports models of the mental lexicon in which lexical entries are specified for word class. Second, the result is at odds with an account of ‘full inheritance’ of frequency across homophones and consequently with speech production models implementing inheritance effects via a shared form representation for homophonous words. The findings are best accounted for in a model that assumes completely separate lexical representations for homophonous words.

How is anticipatory coarticulation of suffixes affected by lexical proficiency?

“…before the uniqueness point after which the morpheme discriminates the morphological function (Kemps et al, 005a;Balling and R. Baayen, 2008). The present results are therefore in line with a growing body of studies showing fine phonetic changes related to higher linguistic structures, especially morphology (Cho, 2001;Smith et al, 2012;Lee-Kim et al, 2012;Plag et al, 2017;Lohmann, 2017;Seyfarth et al, 2017).…”

“…'thyme' vs 'time'). This finding was replicated by Lohmann (2017) for noun-verb homophoneous word pairs. Caselli et al (2016) showed that the acoustic durations of monomorphemic words (e.g.…”

“…There is a growing number of studies showing that the durational characteristics of words and segments vary depending on their grammatical and morphological function (Kemps et al, 005a;Drager, 2011;Lohmann, 2017;Plag et al, 2017;Seyfarth et al, 2017). Here, we sought to see whether tongue movements in the stem vowels [i:] and [A:] recorded by means of electromagnetic articulography vary due to the morphological function realized in the carrier verb.…”

Effects of lexical ambiguity, frequency, and acoustic details in auditory perception

“…Differences due to part of speech are largely attributable to phrase structure, as they are absent when items are placed in the same positions, e.g., sentencefinally (Conwell, 2017) and phrase-finally (Sorensen et al, 1978). The effects of lexical frequency have also sometimes been found to disappear when words are produced in isolation or in frame sentences (Guion, 1995); the most reliable effects are found within corpora of natural speech (e.g., Gahl, 2008;Lohman, 2017), and can be eliminated by controlling for other factors such as predictability based on context (Jurafsky, Bell, & Girand, 2002).…”

Lexical ambiguity and acoustic distance in discrimination

“…However, differences are found most reliably in natural speech (e.g. Gahl 2008;Lohman 2017), and can disappear when words are produced outside of their natural contexts. Differences correlated with lexical frequency can largely be eliminated by producing words in isolation or in frame sentences rather than in meaningful sentences (Guion 1995).…”