The dynamical approach to speech perception: From fine phonetic detail to abstract phonological categories

Nguyen, Noël; Wauquier, Sophie; Tuller, Betty

doi:10.1515/9783110223958.191

Cited by 55 publications

(21 citation statements)

References 0 publications

Supporting

Mentioning

Contrasting

Unclassified

Order By: Relevance

“…Fine phonetic detail has become a code phrase for reliable information in speech acoustics that is not captured by traditional phonological representations but is clearly used in communication (Nguyen et al, 2009). In adults, people adjust their conversational acoustics in subtle ways to signal meaning, and listeners are remarkably attuned to these fine details (Local, 2003).…”

Section: Introductionmentioning

confidence: 99%

Language dependent vowel representation in speech production

Mitsuya

Samson

Ménard

et al. 2013

The Journal of the Acoustical Society of America

View full text Add to dashboard Cite

The representation of speech goals was explored using an auditory feedback paradigm. When talkers produce vowels the formant structure of which is perturbed in real time, they compensate to preserve the intended goal. When vowel formants are shifted up or down in frequency, participants change the formant frequencies in the opposite direction to the feedback perturbation. In this experiment, the specificity of vowel representation was explored by examining the magnitude of vowel compensation when the second formant frequency of a vowel was perturbed for speakers of two different languages (English and French). Even though the target vowel was the same for both language groups, the pattern of compensation differed. French speakers compensated to smaller perturbations and made larger compensations overall. Moreover, French speakers modified the third formant in their vowels to strengthen the compensation even though the third formant was not perturbed. English speakers did not alter their third formant. Changes in the perceptual goodness ratings by the two groups of participants were consistent with the threshold to initiate vowel compensation in production. These results suggest that vowel goals not only specify the quality of the vowel but also the relationship of the vowel to the vowel space of the spoken language.

show abstract

Section: Introductionmentioning

confidence: 99%

Language dependent vowel representation in speech production

Mitsuya

Samson

Ménard

et al. 2013

The Journal of the Acoustical Society of America

View full text Add to dashboard Cite

show abstract

“…Foulkes & Docherty, 2006;Goldinger, 1998;Hawkins, 2003;Nguyen, Wauquier, & Tuller, 2009;Pierrehumbert, 2003, the articles in Johnson & Mullenix, 1997). In impoverished L2 environments exemplar-based learning may yield phonological structures at variance with the patterns of the target language.…”

Section: For the Future: Further Possible Emergent Traitsmentioning

confidence: 99%

Colliding vowel systems in Andean Spanish

Lipski

2015

LAB

View full text Add to dashboard Cite

The acquisition of the Spanish 5-vowel system by speakers of the 3-vowel language Quechua (/ɪ/-/a/-/ʊ/) seldom results in accurate approximation to Spanish vowel spaces when learning takes place informally in post-adolescence. The present study offers data from a minimal immersion environment in northern Ecuador. In a context in which few cues point to the existence of mid-high vocalic oppositions in Spanish (e.g. no literacy, no corrective feedback, almost no viable minimal pairs), these speakers reliably distinguish only three Spanish vowels in production. These Quechua-dominant bilinguals have amorphous front and back vowel spaces considerably broader than those defining Quechua /ɪ/ and /ʊ/, but with no bimodal clustering. Left relatively unfettered, the hybrid system may contribute to an understanding of the relationship between vowel inventory and vowel space topology.

show abstract

“…On the contrary, it has the advantage of suggesting a strict link between our current understanding of phonetic detail and the debate from which it originates. As such, negative features are present in virtually all definitions of phonetic detail (or fine phonetic detail, FPD): for example, "the term FPD has come to be applied to anything that is not considered a major, usually local, perceptual cue for phonemic contrasts in the citation forms of lexical items" (Hawkins 2010), or "FPD refers to phonetic properties that are judged non-essential in the identification of speech sounds in a theoretical framework whose limits the exemplar approach endeavors to demonstrate" (Nguyen et al 2009). As a result, phonetic detail does not exist in its own right, but only as a mirror reflecting a particular thread of evolution in linguistic thinking: we call phonetic detail all phonetic information which has been treated as (negligible) detail in abstractionist approaches, but which is now treated as (possibly) useful information in exemplar-based approaches.…”

Section: Present Exclusion From Phonological Representationsmentioning

confidence: 99%

“…based perspectives. As Nguyen et al (2009) point out, sensitivity to phonetic detail is not inconsistent with abstractionist models which allow for richer phonological representation, as in the case of Stevens' (2004) language-specific enhancing gestures or of Trace's interactive account of fine-grained coarticulatory variation (Elman & McClelland 1988). Exemplar-based approaches provide an intrinsic account for the role of phonetic detail, since they assume that all phonetic information is stored in long term memory.…”

Section: Prosodic Detailmentioning

confidence: 99%

Prosodic detail in Neapolitan Italian

Cangemi¹

2014

View full text Add to dashboard Cite

Storage and cataloguing done by FU Berlin Language Science Press has no responsibility for the persistence or accuracy of URLs for external or third-party Internet websites referred to in this publication, and does not guarantee that any content on such websites is, or will remain, accurate or appropriate. Information regarding prices, travel timetables and other factual information given in this work are correct at the time of first publication but Language Science Press does not guarantee the accuracy of such information thereafter. 1.2.1 Modelling perception of speech Research in the relatively young field of perception of speech deals with how listeners represent and process speech, and how they manage to map the variability displayed by the continuous signal onto stable and discrete units (Jusczyk & Luce 2002). As we have seen above, different approaches to this main issue are possible. In abstractionist frameworks, a further line can be drawn between

show abstract

The dynamical approach to speech perception: From fine phonetic detail to abstract phonological categories

Cited by 55 publications

References 0 publications

Language dependent vowel representation in speech production

Language dependent vowel representation in speech production

Colliding vowel systems in Andean Spanish

Prosodic detail in Neapolitan Italian

Contact Info

Product

Resources

About