The Predictability of the First Phoneme

The first sound of a word reduces uncertainty about the identity of the word more than any other sound in that sequence. I think this might be a predictive mechanism, um, which facilitates lexical recognition. This is something that I really want to look at further. It looks like you can predict early from later, not later from earlier, but I don't know, it's very complicated. There's a difference in the predictability that's like the first phoneme is very special. And it's some kind of wind, it's like some kind of like index into the lexicon that's got privilege status."