Abstract

The transposed-letter (TL) effect refers to the phenomenon that nonwords generated by transposing positions of letters in a word are responded more slowly than control nonwords. TL effect has been interpreted as evidence that the coding of letter position is flexible. In Korean, to investigate flexibility of the position coding, more studies are done by transposing syllables since TL effect has rarely been found in Korean. In the present study, the lexical decision data for 588 syllable-transposed nonword and control nonword pairs from the Korean Lexicon Project were analyzed to examine the syllable transposition effect. Hierarchical linear mixed-effects (LME) models revealed that syllable-transposed nonwords were harder to reject than matched controls, which supports the flexible coding of syllable position. The results also showed that the pre-lexical properties of nonwords had significant effects on nonword rejection, but word frequency and word type had no effect on the rejection of nonwords. The results suggest that the locus of transposed-syllable effects in Hangul is pre-lexical.