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Does spoken language have word boundaries? In my experience learning foreign languages (at the simplest levels) it sure feels like part of the difficulty comes

Does spoken language have word boundaries? In my experience learning foreign languages (at the simplest levels) it sure feels like part of the difficulty comes at picking words out individually, and the pattern recognition only really kicks in around the phrase or sentence level.

alwayslikethis 4y ago
Sort of, sort of not. It depends on the language. English for example is mostly a "stress-timed" language, which means the time between each stressed syllable is more or less perceived to be constant. Since there is usually 1 stress per morpheme, you can recognize when you are now in a new morpheme, though not at the "boundary". Morpheme is not quite the same as word, though.
unhammer 4y ago
here's a rabbit hole for you: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Word#Definitions_and_meanings https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Word#Definitions_and_meanings
int_19h 4y ago
There's often some indicator. E.g. some consonant clusters might only appear at the beginning of the word, never in the middle of it. Or stress might be regular enough to tell you where the last word boundary was or where the next one will be. But in most natural languages, there are usually enough exceptions that you still have to rely on context to parse.
mihaic 4y ago
One thing I've noticed when changing TV channels was that I never seem to hear a half-word. I always seem to just register the first full word I hear, and my brain doesn't even pass onto the concious layers that incomplete stub of the word I caught in the middle of being spoken. There must be some word boundary, that is hard to define though.
ajuc 4y ago
There are languages with regular stress, for example in Polish stress almost always falls on second-to-last syllable. So when you hear stress you know the word is about to end and the next word will soon begin. In practice it's not 100% true, there are regional differences (in Kraków people stress the first syllable instead), so it's not the only factor.

alwayslikethis 4y ago

Sort of, sort of not. It depends on the language. English for example is mostly a "stress-timed" language, which means the time between each stressed syllable is more or less perceived to be constant. Since there is usually 1 stress per morpheme, you can recognize when you are now in a new morpheme, though not at the "boundary". Morpheme is not quite the same as word, though.

unhammer 4y ago

here's a rabbit hole for you: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Word#Definitions_and_meanings https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Word#Definitions_and_meanings

int_19h 4y ago

There's often some indicator. E.g. some consonant clusters might only appear at the beginning of the word, never in the middle of it. Or stress might be regular enough to tell you where the last word boundary was or where the next one will be. But in most natural languages, there are usually enough exceptions that you still have to rely on context to parse.

mihaic 4y ago

One thing I've noticed when changing TV channels was that I never seem to hear a half-word. I always seem to just register the first full word I hear, and my brain doesn't even pass onto the concious layers that incomplete stub of the word I caught in the middle of being spoken. There must be some word boundary, that is hard to define though.

ajuc 4y ago

There are languages with regular stress, for example in Polish stress almost always falls on second-to-last syllable. So when you hear stress you know the word is about to end and the next word will soon begin. In practice it's not 100% true, there are regional differences (in Kraków people stress the first syllable instead), so it's not the only factor.