Evidence for hierarchical categorization of coarticulated phonemes

The reported research investigates how listeners recognize coarticulated ph onemes. First, 2 data sets from experiments on the recognition of coarticul ated phonemes published by D. H. Whalen (1989) are reanalyzed. The analyses indicate that listeners used categorization strategies involving a hierarc hical dependency. Two new experiments are reported investigating the produc tion and perception of fricative-vowel syllables. On the basis of measureme nts of acoustic cues on a large set of natural utterances, it was predicted that listeners would use categorization strategies involving a dependency of the fricative categorization on the perceived vowel. The predictions wer e tested in a perception experiment using a 2-dimensional synthetic fricati ve-vowel continuum. Model analyses of the results pooled across listeners c onfirmed the predictions. Individual analyses revealed some variability in the categorization dependencies used by different participants.