The meaningfulness of nonsense syllables has generally been considered in terms of Ss' ratings and use of associations and pronounceability. The redundancy of nonsense syllables was quantified by means of their component transitional probabilities, using information-theory measurements. These mathematically derived ratings were in agreement with Ss' ratings of association value and pronounceability used by previous investigators to identify the relative meaningfulness of CVC trigrams. It is hypothesized that the redundancy measures, by measuring the amount of structure in trigrams, are indicative of the potentiality for yielding signification meaning in short verbal units.
The materials used in this study were a sample of 210 trigrams, meaningfulness values for verbal units are obtained from a matrix of ratings of these trigrams by other studies, and a 20,000-word sample from which letter transition probabilities were obtained.