Perceptual phonetics of coarticulation

Abstract

In experiments reported earlier at ASA meetings (November, 1975) and elsewhere, reaction time (RT) of subjects monitoring stop-consonant phoneme targets in tape-recorded sentences was observed. RT was compared when the target (a) was carried by the normal, intact sentence version or (b) was temporally displaced by experimental intervention, that is, separated from prior sentence context by addition of 200 msec to the normal pre-stop-consonant silent interval. Faster RT to temporally displaced than to normal targets was interpreted in terms of coarticulatory cues to target existing in the speech interval preceding the intervention which were used to anticipate the target across the intervention interval. In further analysis, data were separated on the basis of four classes of pretarget phonetic context: stop, fricative, sonorant, and vowel. All classes produced coarticulatory effects (relatively faster RT to displaced compared to normal targets), some more than others. Additional analysis indicated similar effects in the normal sentence versions also. Discussion concerns the mapping of perceptual results onto acoustic and articulatory data. [Work supported by NIMH, ARIBSS.]