Segmentation by lexical subtraction in Hungarian speakers of second-language English Laurence White Department of Experimental Psychology, University of Bristol, Bristol, UK James F. Melhorn School of Medicine, Cardiff University, Cardiff, UK Sven L. Mattys Department of Experimental Psychology, University of Bristol, Bristol, UK Using cross-modal form priming, we compared the use of stress and lexicality in the segmentation of spoken English by native English speakers (L1) and by native Hungarian speakers of second-language English (L2). For both language groups, lexicality was found to be an effective segmentation cue. That is, spoken disyllabic word fragments were stronger primes in a subsequent visual word recognition task when preceded by meaningful words than when preceded by nonwords: For example, the first two syllables of corridor were a more effective prime for visually presented corridor when heard in the phrase anythingcorri than in imoshingcorri. The stress pattern of the prime (strong–weak vs. weak– strong) did not affect the degree of priming. For L1 speakers, this supports previous findings about the preferential use of high-level segmentation strategies in clear speech. For L2 speakers, the lexical strategy was employed regardless of L2 proficiency level and instead of exploiting the consistent stress pattern of their native language. This is clear evidence for the primacy and robustness of segmentation by lexical subtraction even in individuals whose lexical knowledge is limited. Keywords: Speech segmentation; Lexical information; Second language; Prosody; Cross-modal priming. There are multiple potential cues available to listeners for the detection of boundaries between spoken words. Mattys, White, and Melhorn (2005) suggest that the relative weighting of segmentation cues depends on the interpretive conditions in which speech is heard. In clear, contextualized speech, English listeners rely pri- marily on high-level information such as lexical identity and preceding syntactic/semantic struc- ture, as available. In poorer interpretive conditions or where lexical information is ambiguous or unhelpful, Mattys et al. found that sublexical Correspondence should be addressed to Laurence White, Department of Experimental Psychology, University of Bristol, 12a Priory Road, Bristol BS8 1TU, UK. E-mail: laurence.white@bristol.ac.uk This research was supported by a British Academy grant to Laurence White (SG-46958). Thanks are due to Anna Babarczy, Eva Deliaga, and staff and students of the Department of Cognitive Science at Budapest University of Technology and Economics for assistance with the experiment and to Maria Go ´sy and Katalin Ma ´dy for advice on Hungarian. We also thank Kathy Rastle and Arthur Samuel for helpful comments on earlier drafts of this paper. 544 # 2009 The Experimental Psychology Society http://www.psypress.com/qjep DOI:10.1080/17470210903006971 THE QUARTERLY JOURNAL OF EXPERIMENTAL PSYCHOLOGY 2010, 63 (3), 544–554 Downloaded By: [University of Bristol Library] At: 17:01 17 March 2010