Sonority projection effect in French: A signal detection theory approach

Focusing on the Sonority Sequencing Principle, we investigated to what extent adult native speakers of French are sensitive to sonority-related constraints compared to lexical attestedness. In a non-word acceptability task, participants were asked to rate the acceptability of three types of non-words using a 6-point scale: non-words with attested sonority rising onset, non-words with unattested sonority rising onset and non-words with unattested sonority falling onset. Data analysis was done using the signal detection theory approach to measure sensitivity of participants to lexical attestedness and to phonological well-formedness (i.e. respecting or violating the Sonority Sequencing Principle). The results showed that speakers distinguished well-formed and ill-formed forms even when lexical attestedness was controlled for. This is consistent with previous findings on sonority projection effects. Participants were more sensitive to lexical attestedness than phonological well-formedness. Future research using computational models should investigate the mechanisms which could account for these findings, namely whether a similar result would be obtained without including any assumption about the Sonority Sequencing Principle in these models.