Syllable Structure or Word Structure? Evidence for Onset and Rime Units with Disyllabic and Trisyllabic Stimuli

Abstract

Most of the evidence that English syllables are composed of onset and rime units comes from studies involving monosyllabic stimuli. Thus, the evidence may reflect word-based structure, words being divided into an initial onset and a remainder, rather than syllable-based structure. To distinguish between word-based and syllable-based structure, we carried out three experiments with disyllabic and trisyllabic stimuli. Students at two different universities learned word games in which a phoneme or group of phonemes was replaced with a fixed phoneme or group of phonemes. We asked whether games that involved an onset or a rime were easier to learn than games that did not involve these units. Results supported the syllable structure hypothesis except in the case of the easiest game for the students at the more selective university. Together with the findings of Fowler, Treiman, and Gross (Journal of Memory and Language, 1993, 32, 115-140), the results suggest that both syllable structure and word structure play a role in the processing of spoken words. © 1995 Academic Press, Inc.