Acoustic and Auditory Phonetics by Johnson Keith

Author:Johnson, Keith
Language: eng
Format: epub, azw3
Publisher: Wiley
Published: 2013-11-29T16:00:00+00:00

5.3 Linguistic Knowledge Shapes Speech Perception

We have seen so far that our ability to perceive speech is shaped partly by the nonlinearities and other characteristics of the human auditory system, and we have seen that what we hear when we listen to speech is partly shaped by the phonetic knowledge we have gained as speakers. Now we turn to the possibility that speech perception is also shaped by our knowledge of the linguistic structures of our native language.

I have already included in section 5.2 (on phonetic knowledge) the fact that the inventory of speech sounds in your native language shapes speech perception, so in this section I’m not focusing on phonological knowledge when I say “linguistic structures,” but instead I will present some evidence of lexical effects in speech perception – that is, that hearing words is different from hearing speech sounds.

I should mention at the outset that there is controversy about this point. I will suggest that speech perception is influenced by the lexical status of the sound patterns we are hearing, but you should know that some of my dear colleagues will be disappointed that I’m taking this point of view.

Scientific method: on being convinced

There are a lot of elements to a good solid scientific argument, and I’m not going to go into them here. But I do want to mention one point about how we make progress. The point is that no one individual gets to declare an argument won or lost. I am usually quite impressed by my own arguments and cleverness when I write a research paper. I think I’ve figured something out and I would like to announce my conclusion to the world. However, the real conclusion of my work is always written by my audience and it keeps being written by each new person who reads the work. They decide if the result seems justified or valid. This aspect of the scientific method, including the peer review of articles submitted for publication, is part of what leads us to the correct answers.

The question of whether speech perception is influenced by word processing is an interesting one in this regard. The very top researchers – most clever, and most forceful – in our discipline are in disagreement on the question. Some people are convinced by one argument or set of results and others are more swayed by a different set of findings and a different way of thinking about the question. What’s interesting to me is that this has been dragging on for a long, long time. And what’s even more interesting is that as the argument drags on, and researchers amass more and more data on the question, the theories start to blur into each other a little. Of course, you didn’t read that here!

Download

Copyright Disclaimer:
This site does not store any files on its server. We only index and link to content provided by other sites. Please contact the content providers to delete copyright contents if any and email us, we'll remove relevant links or contents immediately.