What makes words sound similar?

Hahn, Ulrike and Bailey, Todd M. 2005. What makes words sound similar? Cognition 97 (3) , pp. 227-267. 10.1016/j.cognition.2004.09.006

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Abstract

Although similarity plays an important role in accounts of language processing, there are surprisingly few direct empirical studies of the phonological similarity between words, and it is therefore not clear whether similarity comparisons between words involve processes similar to those involved in other cognitive domains. In five experiments, participants chose which of two monosyllabic pseudo-words sounded more similar to a target pseudo-word. Our results are generally consistent with the structural alignment theory of comparisons between complex mental representations, suggesting that phonological word similarity parallels similarity involving other kinds of information including visual objects and scenes, events, and word meanings. We use our results to test new metrics of word similarity, and identify predictions for future similarity research both in the domain of word sounds and in other cognitive domains.

Item Type:	Article
Date Type:	Publication
Status:	Published
Schools:	Psychology
Subjects:	B Philosophy. Psychology. Religion > BF Psychology P Language and Literature > P Philology. Linguistics
Uncontrolled Keywords:	Word similarity; Phonological similarity; Phonological comparisons; Structural alignment; Phoneme edit distance
Publisher:	Elsevier
ISSN:	0010-0277
Last Modified:	06 May 2021 01:27
URI:	https://orca.cardiff.ac.uk/id/eprint/3260

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