Phonological underspecification and mapping mechanisms in the speech recognition lexicon

Lexical representation of phonological variation in spoken word recognition

“…from coronal to labial) in both legal and illegal contexts. As in Wheeldon and Waksler (2004), a comparable effect was not found for specified segments. These results are consistent with an underspecification account for phonological variant recognition.…”

“…Lahiri and Reetz (2002) investigated underspecification of the segment /n/, finding significant priming relative to a control for both [n] and [m] realizations of an underlying unmarked /n/ but no priming for the [n] realization of an underlying marked /m/. In another investigation of underspecification, Wheeldon and Waksler (2004) used a cross-modal priming task (see also Gaskell & Marslen-Wilson, 1996, 1998 to test variation of theoretically underspecified coronal or specified labial and velar segments in appropriate and inappropriate contexts (''wickib prank'', wicked prank or ''wickib game'', wicked game). Activation for an underspecified segment after place assimilation was equivalent to an unchanged segment, regardless of the context legality.…”

Asymmetric processing of lexical tonal contrast in Swedish

“…Some also use suprasegmental information, such as stress or tone, to mark contrast. The segmental-featural level of speech input has been looked into extensively in the psycholinguistic literature, and many authors have raised the issue of nonisomorphism between the speech signal and its lexical representation-that is, the idea that the lexical phonological representation does not necessarily correspond one to one to the speech signal but can be more abstract and less detailed (see Gaskell & MarslenWilson, 2001;Gow, 2002;Lahiri & Marslen-Wilson, 1991;Lahiri & Reetz, 2002;Wheeldon & Waksler, 2004). The literature on suprasegmental units is by far sparser and has usually been concerned with either the role of stress cues in word recognition (see Cooper, Cutler, & Wales, 2002;Cutler & van Donselaar, 2001;van Donselaar, Koster, & Cutler, 2005) or a comparison of the relative importance of segmental versus suprasegmental cues (see Connell, 2000;Cutler & Chen, 1997;Cutler & Otake, 1999;Schirmer, Tang, Penney, Gunter, & Chen, 2005;Soto-Faraco, Sebastián-Gallés, & Cutler, 2001;Ye & Connine, 1999).…”

Morpho-phonological regularities influence the dynamics of real-time word recognition: Evidence from artificial language learning

“…At the most abstract end of the spectrum, lexical underspecification models (e.g., Lahiri & MarslenWilson, 1991) posit that listeners store abstract lexical representations whose content is underspecified for predictable or default information (e.g., Archangeli, 1988;Archangeli & Pulleyblank, 1989;Dinnsen, 1996;Pulleyblank, 1986Pulleyblank, , 1988aPulleyblank, , 1988bRingen, 1988;Stemberger, 1991;Stemberger & Stoel-Gammon, 1991). During word recognition, listeners determine whether features extracted from a surface form match the stored features; when features are underspecified, they neither support activation of the target word nor elicit a mismatch (Eulitz & Lahiri, 2004;Lahiri & Marslen-Wilson, 1991;Pallier et al, 2001;Scharinger et al, 2012;Wheeldon & Waksler, 2004). As a result, a listener can accept surface greem as a possible match for underlying green, because the coronal sound in /ɡrin/ is underspecified for place and does not therefore mismatch with the [labial] feature of the surface form.…”

“…As a result, a listener can accept surface greem as a possible match for underlying green, because the coronal sound in /ɡrin/ is underspecified for place and does not therefore mismatch with the [labial] feature of the surface form. Such models do not make use of the phonological context that triggers the assimilation, predicting that greem will not mismatch /ɡrin/, regardless of whether the assimilation is licensed by a following labial (Wheeldon & Waksler, 2004).…”