Research master thesis | Linguistics (research) (MA)
open access
Different speech variants can exist of one word, but how much information of these variants is actually stored in the mental lexicon of the speaker? I hypothesise that dialect makes for different...Show moreDifferent speech variants can exist of one word, but how much information of these variants is actually stored in the mental lexicon of the speaker? I hypothesise that dialect makes for different reduction patterns in the consonant cluster /st/ and that consequently, phonetic detail of reduced word forms is stored in the mind of the speaker. This was tested by a production experiment in which spontaneous speech and read speech are compared and a perception experiment in which participants had to perform a lexical decision task. Results showed that different dialects indeed show different frequencies and patterns of cluster reduction. Specifically, the Ede dialect reduced and deleted /s/ more frequently than the dialect Roosendaal. Reaction times of the third experiment showed that reduced word forms are not stored next to the canonical form. However, response data revealed that phonetic detail was influential when recognising reduced forms. I propose a hybrid model of the episodic and abstract model of storage of word forms in that phonetic detail of variants is stored next to the canonical form.Show less
