Thursday, July 25, 2013

Nonce words from Klepousniotou (2001)

It's often difficult to get your hands on the experimental materials that psychologists use, especially when they're difficult to create. This goes especially for the lists of phonologically permissible non-words that are used in lexical decision tasks.

However, in a paper from 2001, Ekaterini Klepousniotouhashas reprinted the list nonce words that she used in her experiment. For handy future reference, here's her list (pp. 219–221):
tanel, scling, kunch, sile, nacket, foach, zan, crant, puit, dace, nank, vap, maist, zail, iye, neg, reck, kip, mongue, ping, orive, rotato, nemon, labbit, rabbage, affle, sarrot, otion, omange, nomato, jotel, ardar, phogo, faln, ubit, leamber, stoge, cagon, ampel, calern, fike, piddar, trage, napion, paggern, mirgake, pelton, wame, wearon, reafon, tuge, stument, cory, prile, ripal, tave, roke, togic, ebergy, folbune, digorce, draze, linerty, snate, shabe, sagary, hode, clikate, cemper, lige, galben, zold, gort, ceal, brug, gatch, bap, nall, dafe, pake, feck, sote, douth, nofe, shourber, wiggow, zear, sig, frum, ablicot, reek, neach, arkond, cujumber, blail, glick, viodin, chidel, modey, spirach, cebery, drace, goice, blaffic, subar, yope, baple, proot, pladow, zipe, plice, loat, gud, vind, gricken, prock, bope, gair, nalt, pable.
From a completely unqualified impressionistic perspective, they seem to be quite qualitatively different.

For instance, roke and pable are plausible non-words, but do not strongly resemble any other English words in particular. On the other hand, rotato, nemon, jotel, sarrot, digorce, and sig seem to do.

I don't know why reek is on this list, either. That seems to be an obvious blunder.

Also, loat is only a graphical non-word: Phonetically, it is identical to load, which is a bit unfortunate.

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