COGNITIVE-FACTORS INVOLVED IN PRESERVING A PHONEMIC CONTRAST

Previous research has demonstrated that semantics and pragmatics influ ence durational modifications in words and segments. The present resea rch investigated specifically how semantics and pragmatics influence p reservation of a phonemic contrast. Experiment 1 examined alveolar fla pping in American English. Potentially flapped words, for example, wri ter and rider, were embedded in each of two types of semantic passages : semantically biasing and semantically neutral passages. In addition, these passages were produced in one of two pragmatic conditions: list ener-present and listener-absent. The results showed that the phonemic voicing distinction between /t/ and /d/ was preserved in biasing pass ages and in the listener-present condition. The /t/-/d/ distinction wa s not preserved in neutral passages or in the: listener-absent conditi on. Experiment 2 examined whether listeners could use the durational d ifferences found to distinguish phonemic voicing in Experiment 1. Our investigation demonstrates that semantics and pragmatics interact with phonological processes in speech production. We speculate that phonol ogical processes may be affected both by speakers' decision processes to adjust their articulation for the benefit of the listener and by sp eakers' internal structure and interactive activation among linguistic units.