2024/10/21 by Jazton Chern, Nichol Castro, Cynthia S. Q. Siew · 1 voice
Computer Science · Psychology · #Natural Language Processing Techniques #Phonetics and Phonology Research #Speech Recognition and Synthesis
paper · doi:10.1037/cep0000357
openalex publication_date 2024/10/21 · openalex created_date 2025/10/10 · openalex updated_date 2026/08/03
Thousands of phonological word forms known to a speaker can be organised as a lexical network using the tools of network science. In these networks, nodes represent words and edges are placed between phonological neighbours. Previous work has shown that phonological networks of various languages have similar macrolevel network properties. The present study aimed to investigate if phonological networks of different languages also have similar mesolevel properties, specifically, the presence of robust community structure. Prior community detection analyses revealed robust community structure for English. Community detection analyses conducted on French, German, Dutch, and Spanish networks indicate that all networks showed strong evidence of community structure-mesolevel clustering of word forms whereby larger communities tended to contain shorter, frequent words with many phonological neighbours. Words of the same community tended to share similar phonotactic structures. Results suggest that the organisation of phonological word forms in language are governed by similar principles that could have important implications for lexical processing. (PsycInfo Database Record (c) 2025 APA, all rights reserved).