phonemic restoration

n. The phonemic restoration effect is a phonological illusion informative about the processes involved in recovering phonological structure during language comprehension. In experiments eliciting phonemic restoration effects, listeners are asked to identify words presented alone or inside sentences. These words are presented with a segment of noise (white noise, coughs, clicks) or with a segment of silence replacing one or several phonetic segments. For example, the /s/ in the word legislatures, uttered inside a sentence, can be removed and replaced with a cough. Listeners to the altered utterance will perceive legislatures as intact and the cough as superimposed, or perhaps even displaced to the right or left of legislatures. Another robust phonemic restoration effect is induced by inserting silence in a word like slit, between the first two consonants. Listeners will hear split, even though the silence could have signaled other stop consonants, [t] or [k]. This second example emphasizes how phonotactic constraints are exploited during speech perception: the sequence [spl] is a phonotactically permissible onset in English, unlike [stl] and [skl]. – EMF

▶ See also PHONOLOGY