A test for errors of phonological rule processing.

Abstract

As a cognitive process, phonological alternations should be subject to error under high cognitive load. An experiment was designed to determine if phonological processes err by comparing two sets of tokens; one that contained a rule and a second set, matched in form, that did not. Samples were obtained from 16 speakers for two types of stimuli: one targeting the phonological process of flapping and the other targeting the phonological process of schwa-insertion. Acoustic analyses were performed to determine the normal range for each speaker. Tokens that fell two standard deviations outside of this range were counted as errors. The frequency of errors was compared to see if the phonological rule condition had more errors. The forms with flapping and schwa-insertion did not induce more errors than the comparison forms without these processes. The results do not provide sufficient evidence for the existence of rule processing errors. This result calls into question the status of these phonological alternations as cognitive processes.