Nonsense syllables: comprehending the "almost incomprehensible variation".

Ebbinghaus noted that there were great differences in nonsense syllables in ease of learning. Later investigators attempted to control for this variability but made little effort to account for the differences. An approach from the point of view of systematic linguistics suggests that a major source of variability can be found in the phonetic and orthographic "distance from English." A scale of phonetic distance and a scale of orthographic distance combined in multiple regression to predict association value and meaningfulness with R above +.80. Experimental tests suggest that subjects are highly sensitive to violations of the rules of syllable structure even when the syllables are very unlike English. It is suggested that nonsense syllables do equate for prior knowledge across subjects because all subjects are highly familiar with the phonetic and orthographic rules that contribute heavily to the meaningfulness of nonsense syllables.