Speech as Perception: Some Contextual Effects on Phonological Segments

In light of the ever-increasing emphasis placed these days on pragmatic aspects of language, it is perhaps appropriate to begin this paper with a statement of communicative intent. Our purpose is to convey a word of caution: when examining the speaker, do not neglect the listener. In other words, in looking at language from the point of view of production, it is critically important to bear in mind that utterances are what they seem to be, and that "seeming" is usually the result of perceptual processing. Whatever phonological, prosodic, lexical, syntactic, semantic and extralinguistic contraints have been posited for production can be assumed to operate on perception as well. While such contraints greatly enhance our ability to segment and interpret the ongoing acoustic signal, they also constitute a potential source of false impressions, auditory illusions (Warren, 1970), etc., from which, incidentally, researchers and clinicians with the best of intentions are by no means exempt. SOME EFFECTS OF LINGUISTIC CONTEXT ON THE LISTENER