Labial Co-Occurrence Constraints in Dutch Gradient Well-Formedness

Abstract

This study concerns the responses of Dutch listeners to non-words violating gradient, non-local co-occurrence constraints. It was hypothesised that these phonological constraints would be psychologically real for participants’ judgements of non-words and that they would apply in a strength-based order. Furthermore, the effect of the lexical factor stimulus length was analysed for its influence on the data. Data analysis shows a highly significant effect for the ALIGN-Lab constraint and a weaker effect for the OCP-Lab and *Lab² constraints. As was expected, ALIGN-Lab is the strongest of the three constraints. Analysis on CVCVC and sCVCVC word structures showed different effects of some lexical factors as well as the *Lab² and OCP-Lab constraint. This study demonstrates the phonological reality of gradient co-occurrence constraints in well-formedness judgements of Dutch (s)CVCVC non-words.