James T. Myers
Lang. Percept. Lab., Dept. of Psychol., SUNY at Buffalo, Buffalo, NY 14260
This study attempted to address a fundamental question concerning lexical representations, namely, whether they are encoded in an abstract phonemic form, where only information that is lexically distinctive is recorded, or more concretely. To this end a same--difference task was given to native speakers of American English. Subjects found that the allophone of /t/ that occurs before /r/, as in ``truck,'' more similar to the distinct phoneme found in ``chuck'' than to the allophone of /t/ found in ``tuck.'' By contrast, subjects found the allophone of /t/ that occurs after /s/, as in ``stuck,'' more similar to the allophone of /t/ that occurs in ``tuck'' than the acoustically similar but distinct phoneme found in ``duck.'' It is hypothesized that while the second segment of words like ``stuck'' is truly an allophone of /t/, the first segment of words like ``truck'' is in fact the same phoneme as in ``chuck.'' The forms being compared are thus represented phonemically in both cases. [Work supported by NIDCD.]