ABSTRACT
The problem with word boundaries lies in locating them. In most spoken language, few cues are available to signal reliably where one word ends and the next begins. However, understanding spoken language must be a process of understanding discrete words rather than utterances as indivisible wholes, because most complete utterances have never previously been experienced by the listeners to whom they are directed. To understand a spoken utterance, therefore, listeners must somehow, in the absence of explicit signals, locate the boundaries between the individual words (or more precisely, the lexically represented units, whatever these may be) of which the utterance is composed.
