The abstractness of lexical representations

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.]