Subsyllabic structure reflected in letter confusability effects in Korean word recognition.

ABSTRACT

Korean subsyllabic structure was investigated by observing the pattern of responses arising from letter transpositions within a syllable in the Hangul script. Experiment 1 revealed no confusions when the onset and coda of one syllable of a disyllabic word were transposed. This was also the case in Experiment 2, where the transposition took place within a syllable having a coda composed of two consonants. However, confusion with the baseword was observed when the two consonants within the complex coda were themselves transposed. These results are taken to support the view that Hangul (and possibly all concatenating orthographic scripts) is processed based on its onset, vowel, and coda structure.