The Possible Word Constraint limits the number of lexical candidates considered in speech recognition by stipulating that input should be parsed into a string of lexically viable chunks. For instance, an isolated single consonant is not a feasible word candidate. Any segmentation containing such a chunk is disfavored. Five experiments using the head-turn preference procedure investigated whether, like adults, 12-month-olds observe this constraint in word recognition. In Experiments 1 and 2, infants were familiarized with target words (e.g., rush), then tested on lists of nonsense items containing these words in "possible" (e.g., "niprush" [nip+rush]) or "impossible" positions (e.g., "prush" [p+rush]). The infants listened significantly longer to targets in "possible" versus "impossible" contexts when targets occurred at the end of nonsense items (rush in "prush"), but not when they occurred at the beginning (tan in "tance"). In Experiments 3 and 4, 12-month-olds were similarly familiarized with target words, but test items were real words in sentential contexts (win in "wind" versus "window"). The infants listened significantly longer to words in the "possible" condition regardless of target location. Experiment 5 with targets at the beginning of isolated real words (e.g., win in "wind") replicated Experiment 2 in showing no evidence of viability effects in beginning position. Taken together, the findings suggest that, in situations in which 12-month-olds are required to rely on their word segmentation abilities, they give evidence of observing lexical viability constraints in the way that they parse fluent speech.

中文翻译：

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婴儿语音分割的词汇可行性限制

可能的词约束通过规定输入应该被解析为一串词汇上可行的块来限制在语音识别中考虑的词汇候选的数量。例如，孤立的单个辅音不是可行的候选词。任何包含此类块的分段都是不受欢迎的。五个使用转头偏好程序的实验调查了 12 个月大的孩子是否像成年人一样在单词识别中观察到这种限制。在实验 1 和 2 中，婴儿熟悉目标词（例如，rush），然后在包含这些词的“可能”（例如，“niprush”[nip+rush]）或“不可能”位置（例如，“冲”[p+冲]）。婴儿听“可能”与“不可能”目标的时间明显更长 当目标出现在无意义项目的末尾时的上下文（匆忙“匆忙”），但不是当它们出现在开头时（“tan”中的棕褐色）。在实验 3 和 4 中，12 个月大的孩子同样熟悉目标词，但测试项目是句子上下文中的真实词（赢在“风”对“窗”）。无论目标位置如何，婴儿听“可能”条件下的单词的时间要长得多。实验 5 在孤立的真实词的开头（例如，win in “wind”）复制了实验 2，没有显示开始位置的生存能力影响的证据。综上所述，研究结果表明，在需要 12 个月大的孩子依赖他们的分词能力的情况下，