Processing resyllabified words in French

Abstract

In French, the final [(r)] of dernier is not pronounced in dernier train (last train), but is pronounced, in the following syllable, in a liaison environment like dernier oignon (last onion). Due to liaison, dernier oignon becomes homophonous with dernier rognon (last kidney). In four pairs of cross-modal priming experiments, French participants made visual lexical decisions to vowel- or consonant-initial targets (e.g., oignon, rognon) following both versions of spoken sentences like C'est le dernier oignon/rognon. Facilitation was found for both types of target when targets matched the speaker's intended segmentation, but was weaker when they mismatched the intended segmentation. In unambiguous sentences there was facilitation only for targets matching the speaker's intentions. The consonants in the liaison environments were shorter than the word-initial consonants (e.g., [(r)] in dernier oignon vs. rognon). Word recognition therefore appears to be influenced by subphonemic cues to the words that speakers intend.