The Effect of Inferences on the Perceptual Categorization of Berlin German Fricatives

In Berlin German, the identification of /c/ as in Fichte ‘spruce’ versus the alveopalatal fricative /ʃ/ in fischte (3. sg. past tense) ‘to fish’ is influenced by what neighborhood in Berlin hearers believe a speaker comes from (KB: Kreuzberg: multi-ethnic, multi-cultural or ZD: Zehlendorf: mono-ethnic, upscale, affluent area) and the inferences made as to how the speaker is likely to realize these two variants. Our results indicate that listeners adjust their interpretation of synthesized acoustic continua in accordance with their expectation, strongly suggesting that both perceptual cues and inferred social factors play a role in the categorization of speech stimuli. Thus, the results show that the mere suggestion of where the speaker may come from even within the confines of a city is enough to trigger such inferences.