Coping with phonological assimilation in speech perception : evidence for early compensation

The pronunciation of the same word may vary considerably as a consequence of its context. The Dutch word tuin (English, garden) may be pronounced tuim if followed by bank (English, bench), but not if followed by stoel (English, chair). In a series of four experiments, we examined how Dutch listeners cope with this context sensitivity in their native language. A first word identification experiment showed that the perception of a word-final nasal depends on the subsequent context. Viable assimilations, but not unviable assimilations, were often confused perceptually with canonical word forms in a word identification task. Two control experiments ruled out the possibility that this effect was caused by perceptual masking or was influenced by lexical top-down effects. A passive-listening study in which electrophysiological measurements were used showed that only unviable, but not viable, phonological changes elicited a significant mismatch negativity. The results indicate that phonological assimilations are dealt with by an early prelexical mechanism.peer-reviewe

The role of perceptual integration in the recognition of assimilated word forms

We investigated how spoken words are recognized when they have been altered by phonological assimilation. Previous research has shown that there is a process of perceptual compensation for phonological assimilations. Three recently formulated proposals regarding the mechanisms for compensation for assimilation make different predictions with regard to the level at which compensation is supposed to occur as well as regarding the role of specific language experience. In the present study, Hungarian words and nonwords, in which a viable and an unviable liquid assimilation was applied, were presented to Hungarian and Dutch listeners in an identification task and a discrimination task. Results indicate that viably changed forms are difficult to distinguish from canonical forms independent of experience with the assimilation rule applied in the utterances. This reveals that auditory processing contributes to perceptual compensation for assimilation, while language experience has only a minor role to play when identification is required.peer-reviewe