Representational choices are crucial to the success of connectionist modelling. Most previous models of auditory word perception in continuous speech have relied upon a traditional Chomsky-Halle style inventory of features; many have also postulated a localise phonemic level of representation mediating a featural and a lexical level. A different immediate representation of the speech input is proposed, motivated by current developments in phonological theory, namely Government Phonology. The proposed input representation consists of nine elements with physical correlates. A model of speech perception employing this input representation is described. Successive bundles of elements arrive across time at the input. Each is mapped, by means of recurrent connections, onto a window representing the current bundle and a context consisting of three such bundles either side of the current bundle. Simulations demonstrate the viability of the proposed input representation. A simulation of the compensation for coarticulation effect (Elman and McClelland. 1989) demonstrates an interpretation which does not involve top-down interaction between lexical and tower levels. The model described is envisaged as part of a wider model of language processing incorporating semantic and orthographic levels of representation, with no local lexical entries. ^