Conversation, Ambiguity, and the Daily Improviser - Part Two

In my previous article, I dealt with the topic of coarticulation, the human tendency to overlap vocal sounds while speaking. As Steven Pinker notes in his book The Language Instinct, we do this because the tongue is “a heavy slab of meat that takes time to heft into place…. We place the tongue in the [position] that offers the shortest path to the target for the next [sound].“ Thus, we pronounce “NPR” as “EM-pee-arr” and “horseshoe” as “HOR-shoe,” with the first “s” unarticulated.

So how do we accurately comprehend what a coarticulated voicing really means? Pinker first deals with a theory – the top-down view – that says we’re constantly anticipating and filling in the details of the fragmented and slurred sounds that emit from others’ mouths. As I observed last time, if the top-down view is correct, then we have a significant barrier at the physiological level to truly perceiving things “as they are.”

However, Pinker then proceeds to cast doubt on the top-down view, citing research that questions whether we actually do resolve ambiguity by overlaying what we expect to hear on top of what we actually hear. To demonstrate this, he draws on an unlikely source: Mis-heard rock and roll lyrics, aka mondegreens, so called because of an oft-cited misinterpretation of the folk ballad “The Bonnie Earl O’ Moray”:

“They have slain the Earl of Moray / And Lady Mondegreen.” (Actual lyric: And laid him on the green)

Other common mis-hearings of rock and roll lyrics include (actual lyrics in parens):

"'Scuse me while I kiss this guy” ('Scuse me while I kiss the sky) – Jimi Hendrix

“You and me and Leslie, groovin’” (You and me endlessly groovin’) – The Young Rascals


“Wrapped up like a deuce, another runner in the night” (Revved up like a deuce [i.e., a coupe], another runner in the night) – Bruce Springsteen

And of course the ever-popular:

“There’s a bathroom on the right” (There’s a bad moon on the rise) – Creedence Clearwater Revival

So how do mondegreens refute the top-down theory? Says Pinker:

“The interesting thing about mondegreens is that the mis-hearings are generally less plausible than the intended lyrics. In no way do they bear out any sane listener’s general expectations of what a speaker is likely to say or mean…. Apparently, listeners lock in to some set of words that fit the sound and that hang together more or less as English words and phrases, but plausibility and general expectations are not running the show.”

Pinker cites additional evidence beyond the mondegreen example to show that our attempts to resolve vocal ambiguity are more about acoustics and comprehension than about “hearing what we expect to hear.” The clear implication, then, is that we can’t ‘scuse ourselves from attempting to perceive things “as they are” because of some supposedly innate human compulsion to read our own meaning into others’ speech.

Well, that’s it for today! To quote the Bachman Turner Overdrive, I think it’s time now to be bakin’ carrot biscuits – er, takin’ care of business.