RESUMEN

In spoken language, reductions of word forms occur regularly and need to be accommodated by the listener. Intriguingly, this accommodation is usually achieved without any apparent effort. The neural bases of this cognitive skill are not yet fully understood. We here presented participants with reduced words that were either preceded by a related or an unrelated visual prime and compared electric brain responses to reduced words with those to their full counterparts. In time-domain, we found a positivity between 400 and 600 ms differing between reduced and full forms. A later positivity distinguished primed and unprimed words and was modulated by reduction. In frequency-domain, alpha suppression was stronger for reduced than for full words. The time- and frequency-domain reduction effects converge towards the view that reduced words draw on attention and memory mechanisms. Our data demonstrate the importance of interactive processing of bottom-up and top-down information for the comprehension of reduced words.

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RESUMEN

Reduction and deletion processes occur regularly in conversational speech. A segment that is affected by such reduction and deletion processes in many Germanic languages (e.g., Dutch, English, German) is /t/. There are similarities concerning the factors that influence the likelihood of final /t/ to get deleted, such as segmental context. However, speakers of different languages differ with respect to the acoustic cues they leave in the speech signal when they delete final /t/. German speakers usually lengthen a preceding /s/ when they delete final /t/. This article investigates to what extent German listeners are able to reconstruct /t/ when they are presented with fragments of words where final /t/ has been deleted. It aims also at investigating whether the strategies that are used by German depend on the length of /s/, and therefore whether listeners are using language-specific cues. Results of a forced-choice segment detection task suggest that listeners are able to reconstruct deleted final /t/ in about 45% of the times. The length of /s/ plays some role in the reconstruction, however, it does not explain the behavior of German listeners completely.

RESUMEN

Place assimilation can lead to neutralization of segmental contrasts. It is controversial, however, to what extent such neutralizations actually happen in natural speech. This study examines: (i) the degree to which regressive place assimilations occur in word final consonants in conversational German, and (ii) whether these assimilations are perceived as neutralized by listeners. The production analysis, based on spontaneous speech, shows that complete assimilations do take place in conversational speech and that there is a clear asymmetry between coronal versus labial and dorsal segments. Furthermore, function words show a higher degree of assimilation than lexical words. Two experiments examined the effects of assimilation on perception. A forced choice reaction time perception experiment, using nasal stimuli from the corpus, examined how fast and accurately listeners identified sounds in different segmental contexts. Results indicate that (a) with equal accuracy and speed, listeners identified original and assimilated [m]s; (b) unassimilated-/m/s were identified equally well across contexts, but not unassimilated-/n/s. A free transcription experiment reproduced these findings. An acoustic analysis provides further evidence that regressive place assimilation across word boundaries can result in absolute neutralization of place contrasts in running speech. The results support models predicting asymmetries between coronal versus labial and dorsal consonants.

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