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Units of Organization and Analysis in the Perception of Speech

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The Psychophysics of Speech Perception

Part of the book series: NATO ASI Series ((ASID,volume 39))

Abstract

The message uttered by a talker and the message the perceiver hears possess a common linguistic structure—phones, syllables, words, phrases, and sentences. However, the acoustic connection between the talker and listener is more easily described nonlinguistically, as an assortment of acoustic components. Research on the perceptual links in the speech chain has revealed the listener’s impressive accomplishment in recognizing the linguistic properties of such acoustic patterns, inasmuch as linguistic units are not conveyed by an isomorphic set of acoustic units. The distribution of acoustic ingredients in a speech signal is immediately revealing on this point: The junctures between the syllables, words, and even phrases that the perceiver hears do not correspond to the acoustic junctures, which are more numerous and more varied than their linguistic counterparts (Fant, 1962). In consequence, the paradigm problem for research in speech perception is to explain how the listener accomplishes the reduction of acoustic variation to linguistic significance.

This work was supported by grant NS-22096 from the National Institute of Neurological and Communicative Disorders and Stroke.

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Authors and Affiliations

  1. Department of Psychology, Barnard College, 3009 Broadway, New York, New York, 10027, USA

    Robert E. Remez

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Editors and Affiliations

  1. Institute of Phonetics, University of Utrecht, Utrecht, The Netherlands

    M. E. H. Schouten

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© 1987 Martinus Nijhoff Publishers, Dordrecht

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Remez, R.E. (1987). Units of Organization and Analysis in the Perception of Speech. In: Schouten, M.E.H. (eds) The Psychophysics of Speech Perception. NATO ASI Series, vol 39. Springer, Dordrecht. https://doi.org/10.1007/978-94-009-3629-4_34

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  • DOI: https://doi.org/10.1007/978-94-009-3629-4_34

  • Publisher Name: Springer, Dordrecht

  • Print ISBN: 978-94-010-8123-8

  • Online ISBN: 978-94-009-3629-4

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