Abstract: This paper investigated the distribution of word segmentation information in sentence using as stimuli partly-deleted phonetically-ambiguous sentences. The results of the discrimination experiment show that the most important word segmentation cues are in the ambigaous syllables; the transitions of proceeding and following syllables for the ambiguous ones are also useful; even the part of sentences excluding the ambiguous syllables and transitions sometime contribute to word segmentation.

Key words: word segmentation, phonetically-ambigous sentence, ambiguous syllable, transition