Where is the vertical bar b vertical bar in "absurde" [apsyrd]? It is in French listeners' minds

In French words such as "absurde" ("bs/bt" words), the under lying linguist ic code lbl corresponds both to the spelling "b" and to the morphophonemic code {ab-} + {surd}. Yet, because of voice assimilation, the phonetic-acous tic and perceptual realization of the labial stop is [p] not [b]. III a pho neme monitoring task, listeners detected /b/ more often but more slowly tha n Ipl in "bs/bt" welds. A phonemic gating task revealed the time course of phonetic judgments. The /b/ responses gradually increased and eventually ov ercame the initially dominant ipl responses before words were identified, a s a classic word-guessing gating task showed. A further phoneme monitoring task with nonwords that mimicked the "bs/bt" words confirmed that the lingu istic code inducing /b/ responses built up prelexically. We propose that th is code is lexically mediated by a cohort of words sharing the graphic code "b." Alternatively, it could be conveyed by prefixes identified on-line, s uch as {ab-} in "absurde." (C) 2000 Academic Press.