Are onsets and codas important in processing letter position? A comparison of TL effects in English and Korean

Abstract

When two consonants within an English word were transposed to create a nonword, difficulty in lexical decision responses to that nonword was revealed, most strongly when the coda of the first syllable was exchanged with the onset of the second (e.g., nakpin derived from napkin), but also when onsets were exchanged between syllables (e.g., kapnin) as well as codas (e.g., nankip). The latter findings are incompatible with current models of letter processing. Moreover, such transposed letter (TL) effects were shown to be considerably reduced in Hangul, the alphabetic script used in Korean. Because Hangul physically demarcates the onset and coda positions for every consonant, it is argued that it is ambiguity in assignment of a consonant to an onset or coda slot that leads to the TL effect in a linear script such as English. Such a conclusion implies that models of letter processing should incorporate the involvement of subsyllabic structure, something that is currently lacking.