In the present study, the perceptual performance of 24 English monolinguals and 24 German‐dominant German‐English bilinguals was subjected to detailed analysis. Stimuli consisted of 57 semantically anomalous natural and vocoded English sentences. Results revealed that the monolinguals made an average of 5.92 errors and the bilinguals 66.58 errors in the natural condition, while the monolinguals made an average of 30.58 errors and the bilinguals 83.17 errors in the vocoded condition. For both groups, phonemic errors predominated, although approximately 30%–40% of the errors were morphosyntactic and/or lexicosemantic. {These latter results were essentially in agreement with previous findings [M. Mack and B. Gold, MIT Lincoln Laboratory Tech. Rep. 703 (1985) and J. Acoust. Soc. Am. Suppl. I77, S10–S11 0985)].} Further, the bilinguals' responses to the vocoded stimuli suggested that they were employing a theory‐driven rather than a data‐driven response strategy, presumably due to the difficulty of the task. [Work sponsored by the Department of the Air Force.]