Phonetic Representations in the Mental Lexicon

Abstract

Abstract In this chapter I shall argue that (i) our mental representations of the form of words are essentially phonetic, rather than symbolic-phonological; (ii) phonological competence includes and makes use of statistical properties of the time-course of phonetic representations; and (iii) a combination of phonetic, statistical, and semantic knowledge is sufficient to explain many aspects of phonological structure. Since generative grammar claims to be concerned with real linguistic knowledge, generative phonologists might regard the mental existence of phonological representations as pretty incontrovertible. Many psychologists of language too, though rarely so concerned with the kind of relatively abstract relations that phonologists focus on, are happy to speak of phonemes, syllables, and the phonological lexicon (see e.g. Dell 1986, Ellis and Young 1988, Cutler and Norris 1988, Fear, Cutler, and Butterfield 1995 ). It would be odd to deny the reality of such things.