A corpus of consonant-vowel-consonant real words and nonwords: Comparison of phonotactic probability, neighborhood density, and consonant age of acquisition

Abstract

A corpus of 5,765 consonant-vowel-consonant (CVC) sequences was compiled, and phonotactic probability and neighborhood density based on both child and adult corpora were computed. This corpus of CVCs, provided as supplementary materials, was analyzed to address the following questions: (1) Do computations based on a child corpus differ from those based on an adult corpus? (2) Do phonotactic probability and/or neighborhood density of real words differ from that of nonwords? (3) Do phonotactic probability and/or neighborhood density differ across CVCs varying in consonant age-of-acquisition? Results showed significant differences in phonotactic probability and neighborhood density for child versus adult corpora, replicating prior findings. The impact of this difference on future studies will depend on the level of precision needed in specifying probability and density. In addition, significant and large differences in phonotactic probability and neighborhood density were detected between real words and nonwords, which may present methodological challenges for future research. Lastly, CVCs composed of earlier acquired sounds differed significantly in probability and density from CVCs composed of later acquired sounds, although this effect was relatively small and less likely to present significant methodological challenges to future studies.