Assimilation context effects as cue grouping phenomena

Abstract

Listeners show bidirectional context effects in the perception of spontaneously assimilated speech. One account of these phenomena, feature cue parsing theory, suggests that both regressive and progressive context effects result from the same perceptual grouping process of aligning feature cues with assimilated word offsets and assimilating word onsets. This hypothesis was examined through two form priming experiments that explored the interpretation of spontaneously assimilated items under manipulations that either favored or disfavored the perceptual grouping of feature cues associated with assimilated and assimilating items. In both experiments, listeners heard phrases such as right berries in which a word final coronal segment (/t/) assimilated the non-coronal place of a subsequent word onset (labial /b/) to form an item that sounded like one of its lexical competitors (ripe). In Experiment 1 spatial continuity was manipulated through the use of same and different side lateralized presentation of assimilated words and their contexts. In Experiment 2 continuity in speaker identity was manipulated through cross-splicing. Analyses contrasted the pattern of priming found in continuous versus non-continuous contexts. The results are discussed in the terms of competing interpretations of assimilation context effects. [Work supported by the NIH.]