The Role of Phonological Factors in the Processing of Polish Phonotactics

One of the predominant questions asked in phonological research refers to the way in which strings of vowels and consonants are perceived and processed by native speakers. In this paper, we make an attempt at uncovering the mental processes that underlie the online processing of phonotactics in Polish; a language featuring an unusual array of strings of consonants. We report on a reaction time experiment using nonce monosyllables with final consonant clusters and identify phonological factors that determine their acceptability. The factors include cluster (non-)existence in the lexicon of Polish, cluster well-formedness in terms of the universally preferred sonority slope, and the quality of the nuclear vowel. The findings testify to the facilitative role of cluster existence and well-formedness on phonotactic intuitions. That is, universally preferred and existent clusters are easily identified as possible and involve the shortest reaction times. Moreover, we detected a systematic perceptual contribution of vowels, whereby the front-back dimension (rather than sonority-related high-low dimension) seems to facilitate the decision-making process.