12162021 Language Speech perception Acoustic Phonetics Articulatory Phonetics

12/16/2021 • Language » Speech perception ◊ Acoustic Phonetics ◊ Articulatory Phonetics ◊ Top-down processes Study Question. • Compare and contrast acoustic and articulatory phonetics

Language • Phonology: The rules underlying production and comprehension of speech. • Phonetics: The nature of linguistic sounds. » Articulatory phonetics: Placement of the mouth, tongue, lips, etc. used to produce particular sounds. » Acoustic phonetics: Physical characteristics of speech sounds. ◊ The Speech Spectrograph

Language • Some Basics Compression » Qualitative and quantitive elements of sensory stimuli High Low

Language • The Speech spectrograph

Language • Acoustic Phonetics » Phoneme: The smallest unit of speech that if changed would change the meaning of a word. E. g. , “Pit” ----> /b/+/I/+/t/ = “bit” /p/ + /I/ + /t/ /i/ /p/+/i/+/t/ = “peat” /g/ /b/+/I/+/g/ = “pig”

Language i I e æ u U o c a e sip s zip z rip r s should z pleasure c chop j gyro yip y k kale g gale h hail h sing V p pull b bull m man w will f fill v vet q thigh o thy t tie d die n near l lear Vowels ' Consonants i heed hid bait head boot put boat bought hot sofa many

Language • Articulatory Phonetics » Three ways in which consonants differ. 1. Place of articulation – – – – Bilabial --> /p/ Labiodental --> /f/ Dental --> /Q/ Alveolar --> /z/ Palatal --> /ˆz/ Velar --> /k/ Glottal --> /h/

Language • Articulatory Phonetics » Three ways in which consonants differ. 2. Manner of articulation – – – Stops --> /b/ Fricatives --> /s/ Africatives --> /j/ Nasals --> /m/ Lateral --> /L/ Semivowels --> /r/ 3. Voicing ◊ Vibration of vocal chords

Language • Articulatory Phonetics » Voicing

Language • Articulatory Phonetics » Is speech special? ◊ Specialized neural mechanisms for perceiving speech. – Categorical perception Voice onset-time and distinguishing /d/ from /t/

Language • Articulatory Phonetics » Vowels ◊ Positioning and part of tongue – Height High (/i/ beet) Med (/e/ bait) Low (/a/ pot) – Part Front (/I/ bit) Central (but) Back (/o/ boat)

Language • The search for invariants » Distinctive features ◊ Chomskey & Halle (1968) – The Sound Pattern of English 5 groups of features ◊ Miller & Nicely ◊ Articulatory features » Problems with a simple bottom-up approach ◊ There are no periods of silence between phonemes

Language • The search for invariants » Phonemic information is presented in parallel ◊ Coarticulation ◊ E. g. Cf. /M/ in “Tim” vs. “/M/ in “mad” » We perceive them as the same, but they are different » We perceive the same sound differently according to the context ◊ E. g. : Writer vs. Rider ◊ E. g. : Insert a silence between /s/ and /i/ --> “ski” Insert a silence between /s/ and /u/ --> “spew”

Language • Top down processes » Phonemic restoration effect (Warren, 1970) ◊ Their respective legi*latures ◊ Found a *eel on the axle ◊ Found a *eel on the shoe

Language • Perceiving conversational speech » Two main problems: 1. There are no physical boundaries between words – Anna Mary candy lights since imp pulp lay thing 2. Speech is sloppy – -> Misheard Lyrics – -> This was the best buy vs. She is a bad girl

Language • Perceiving conversational speech » Two main problems:

Language What are you doing ?

Language Whad’ya doin’?

Language • Top-down processes and speech perception » Phonemic perception ◊ The Mc. Gurk Effect » Sentence comprenension ◊ Miller & Isard (1963) – Participants shadow sentences: Grammatic: Bears steal honey from the hive. Semantically incorrect: Bears shoot honey on the highways. Ungrammatic: Across bears eyes honey the bill.

Language • Top-down processes and speech perception ◊ Miller & Isard (1963) – Results No noise Mod. Noise Gram. 89% 63% Nonsem. 79% 22% Nongram. 56% 3%