Phonological constraints on reading: Evidence from the obligatory contour principle

Hebrew frequently manifests gemination in its roots, but strictly constrain s its position: Root-final gemination is extremely frequent (e.g.. bbd), wh ereas root-initial gemination is rare (e.g., bdd). This asymmetry is explai ned by a universal constraint on phonological representations. the Obligato ry Contour Principle (McCarthy. 1986). Three experiments examined whether t his phonological constraint affects performance in a lexical decision task. The rejection of nonwords generated from novel roots with root-initial gem ination (e.g.. Ki-KuS) was significantly faster than roots with final gemin ation controls (e.g.. Si-KuK). The emergence of this asymmetry regardless o f the position of geminates in the word implicates a constraint on root, ra ther than simply word structure, Our results further indicate that speakers are sensitive to the structure of geminate bigrams, i.e.. their identity. Nonwords formed from roots with Anal gemination (e.g.. Si-KuK) were signifi cantly more difficult to reject than foils generated from frequency-matched no gemination controls (e.g., Ni-KuS). Speakers are thus sensitive to the identity of geminates and constrain their location in the root. These findi ngs suggest that the representations assembled in reading a deep orthograph y are structured linguistic entities, constrained by phonological competenc e. (C) 2001 Academic Press.