The Role of Relative Indeterminacy in Word Initials and Finals: a Study in Word Identification

Sixty French six-letter words of high frequency of occurrence (common nouns) were mutilated by deletion either of two first or two last letters. 24 subjects were asked to reconstruct them. The number of errors and non-responses was higher in the case of initial mutilation, and so was the number of equivalent responses. This result shows that beginnings of words have more variety than ends. Statistical analysis using dictionaries and concerning these words and another sample of 42 similar five-letter words leads to the same conclusion. The meaning of this result, from the point of view of error pre-correction theory, is discussed.