Department of Linguistics

The role of distributed systematic acoustic-phonetic detail in spoken word recognition.

Award holders

Sarah Hawkins (Cambridge), Noël Nguyen (Aix-en-Provence)

Project Funding

EPSRC Gr/N19595

Summary

This is a small grant to allow continued collaboration between Dr. Hawkins and Prof. Nguyen. We have shown that acoustic properties of /l/ in a syllable onset provide perceptually salient information about whether the syllable coda is voiced or voiceless. This is a small effect, as would be expected for a cue that is in a non-adjacent segment. Nevertheless, it has important theoretical implications. We are currently collecting more data to substantiate our claims, and to begin developing a computational model of spoken word recognition that uses long-domain as well as short-domain phonetic information. The model's main originality is the assumption that the earliest stages of spoken word recognition comprise matching a nonsegmental representation of the auditory signal to a lexical representation that is also nonsegmental. This work is unusual in combining psycholinguistic methods with phonetic materials and principles.

References:

Nguyen, N., and Hawkins, S. (1998). Syllable-onset acoustic properties associated with syllable-coda voicing. Proceedings of the 5th International Conference on Spoken Language Processing. Available on CD-ROM: ICSLP-98. Paper #539.

Nguyen, N., and Hawkins, S. (1999). Implications for word recognition of phonetic dependencies between syllable onsets and codas. In J.J. Ohala, Y. Hasegawa, M. Ohala, D. Granville, and A.C. Bailey (eds.), Proceedings of the XIVth International Congress of Phonetic Sciences . University of California, Berkeley, CA. 1, 647-650.

Hawkins, S., and Nguyen, N. (in press). Effects on word recognition of syllable-onset cues to syllable-coda voicing. In J.K. Local, R.A. Ogden, and R.A.M. Temple (eds.) Papers in Laboratory Phonology VI. Cambridge University Press.