Vowel Mutability in Print in English and Spanish
Danny R. Moates | Ohio University
Studies of vowel mutability have shown that it is easier to change a nonword (e.g., /tibl/) into a real word by changing a vowel (/tebl/) than by changing a consonant (/fibl/). All previous studies have used auditory materials, suggesting that the effect is a spoken language phenomenon. We conducted two studies with print materials, one in English and one in Spanish. Both showed clear vowel mutability effects, suggesting that vowel mutability is a more a general phenomenon. Vowel mutability is also shown to be one of many phenomena in which vowels and consonants show asymmetrical effects. Implications for models of auditory and visual word recognition are discussed.
Keywords: visual word recognition, vowel/consonant asymmetry, auditory word recognition, vowel mutability
Published online: 25 January 2013
https://doi.org/10.1075/ml.7.3.04moa
https://doi.org/10.1075/ml.7.3.04moa
Cited by
Cited by 2 other publications
Bond, Z. S.
2021.
In The Handbook of Speech Perception,
► pp. 266 ff. 
Nazzi, Thierry & Anne Cutler
2019. How Consonants and Vowels Shape Spoken-Language Recognition.
Annual Review of Linguistics 5:1 ► pp. 25 ff.
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