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words and soundskyle e. chambers

2007.11.06

SENTENCE

PHRASE

WORD

MORPHEME

PHONEME

The umpires talked to the players

The umpires talked to the players

The talked to the playersumpires

The talk to the playumpire s ed ser

p l e

The barista poured the coffee in the sink.in the mug

sentence comprehension

“Do baristasnormally dosomething orhave somethingdone to them?”

“What thingsare pourable?”

“Do I need toknow whichcoffee?”

SENTENCE

PHRASE

WORD

MORPHEME

PHONEME

The umpires talked to the players

The umpires talked to the players

The talked to the playersumpires

The talk to the playumpire s ed ser

p l e

WORD

PHONEME

The talked to the playersumpires

p l e

discriminating sounds

• “b” in “bet” • “p” in “pet"

D1 = D1D2 = D2D3 ≠ D3

angles? yesangles? no

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anatomy for speech production properties of tubes

airflow

higher pitch

lower pitch

longer = lower musical instruments

keystubemouthpiece

vocal anatomy, picasso style

tongue(keys)

vocal cords(mouthpiece)

vocal tract (tube)

speech anatomy in action

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vowel production

• tongue root location– height– frontness

vowel height

“beet” “bat”

vowel frontness

“beet” “boot”

consonant production

• Where does the constriction occur?– place

• What’s the airflow like?– manner

place of articulation

“tip” “keep”

manner of articulation

• brief air stoppage– e.g., stop consonant; “b, p, t, k…”

• air disturbed but not stopped– e.g., fricatives; “f, s…”

• nasal cavity also used– e.g., nasals; “m, n…”

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voicing

• Do the vocal cords vibrate?• If so, when?

The following images are quite graphic.Some individuals may find them disturbing.

Viewer discretion is advised.

vocal cords voicing

• When does vocal cord vibration begin?

voice onset time

voiced

voiceless

consonants and vowels

• Vowel dimensions– how open is the vocal tract?– where is the vocal tract constricted?

• Consonant dimensions– where is it produced?– how is it produced?– when do the vocal chords vibrate?

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back to /b/ and /p/

• The place of articulation is the same– stoppage is at the lips

• The manner is the same– stop consonants

• But the voice onset time differs– vibration earlier for /b/ than /p/

discriminating /b/ and /p/

• could voice onset time be used?

angles? yesangles? no

b p

voiced? novoiced? yes

categorical perception

• Find phoneme boundary

VOT

% b responses

b p

categorical perception

• Compare items across the boundary toitems on one side of the boundary

VOT

% b responses

b p

same different

categorical perception

• Basic effect: Adults judge items on oneside of their boundary as the “same” butitems across the boundary as “different,”even though the amount of acousticdifference is the same.

categorical perception

• consistent with acoustic defining feature– less than VOT boundary, then “b”– greater than VOT boundary, then “p”

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McGurk effect

• Same acoustic input– different perception

• Different acoustic input– same perception

lack of invariance

• Even though our perception is stable• Acoustic signal highly variable

praat demos

• “Where were you a year ago?”– different rates– different genders

Holt demos coarticulation

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coarticulation

• sounds ‘colored’ by surrounding context

• unlike woody, heard as same sound

• different acoustics-->same experience

coarticulation

lack of invariance

• no one-to-one mapping betweenacoustic properties and the perceivedsound

• same acoustics-->different sounds• different acoustics-->same sound

no beads on a string

• can’t specify which part of speech is andonly is the “b” sound…

• back to praat

candyboard games use this…

• Mad Gab demo

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oronyms

• The good can decay many ways.– The good candy came anyways.

• The stuffy nose can lead to problems.– The stuff he knows can lead to problems.

archive of misheard lyrics

• The real lyrics were:– Well, the Sun gets weary and the Sun goes down,

– Ever since the watermelon...

• Misheard as:– Well, the Sun gets weary and the Sun goes down,

– Elvis is a watermelon...

speech perception summary

• perceptual constancy• lack of acoustic invariance• nonlinearity

word recognition

word recognition is incremental

• Recall priming experiment– nurse-->doctor– bread-->butter

• Demonstrates that processing one wordactivates other semantically similar words

word recognition is incremental(zwisterlood & marslen-wilson)

“captain” (auditory)

ship (visual)“wicket” (auditory)

prime target

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word recognition is incremental(zwisterlood & marslen-wilson)

“capt…” (auditory)

ship (visual)“wick…” (auditory)

prime target

“capt” is enough to activate “captain”

“captain” activates semantically related “ship”

word recognition is incremental(zwisterlood & marslen-wilson)

“capt…” (auditory)ship (visual)

“wick…” (auditory)

prime target

slave (visual)

“captain” isn’t the only word “capt” activates“captive” also active….

word recognition is incremental(zwisterlood & marslen-wilson)

“captain” (auditory) ship (visual)

“wicket” (auditory)

prime target

slave (visual)

cohort model(marslen-wilson)

• c

• “captive, captain, cap, casket, cocktail,curtain, curtail,…”

cohort model(marslen-wilson)

• ca

• “captive, captain, cap, casket, cocktail,curtain, curtail,…”

cohort model(marslen-wilson)

• cap

• “captive, captain, cap, casket, cocktail,curtain, curtail,…”

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cohort model(marslen-wilson)

• capt

• “captive, captain, cap, casket, cocktail,curtain, curtail,…”

cohort model(marslen-wilson)

• captiv

• “captive, captain, cap, casket, cocktail,curtain, curtail,…”

google suggests

• reminds one of search recommendations

problems with cohort strategy

• dictionary example• same problem for google

• more generally-->error tolerance

Put the beaker below the diamond

use the entire word(allopenna et al.)

Put the beaker below the diamondtime (ms)

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Put the beaker below the diamondtime (ms)

cohort effect Put the…

time (ms)

Put the bea…

time (ms)

Put the beaker…

time (ms)

Put the beaker below the diamondtime (ms)

rhyme effect

Put the beaker below the diamondtime (ms)

rhyme effect

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error tolerance

• all sounds in word modulate activation

sentence context helps

“capt…” (auditory)ship (visual)

“wick…” (auditory)

prime target

slave (visual)

“The men stood around for a while and watched their capt…”

sentence context helps

“capt…” (auditory) ship (visual)

“wick…” (auditory)

prime target

slave (visual)

“The men had spent many years serving under their capt…”

error tolerance

• use entire word to modulate activation• use sentential context to adjust activation

goodness of fit

• phonemic overlap of candidatesdetermines level of activation

• processing continuous, incremental

• but even finer than individual sounds…

remember coarticulation

• surrounding sounds ‘color’ each other

• neck– “e” has a little of the “k” sound

• net– “e” has a little of the “t” sound

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net net ne(t)t

neck net ne(ck)t

nep net ne(p)t

+

+

+

using coarticulation

ne(t)t

ne(ck)t

ne(p)t

Now click on the net

details(dahan et al.)

word recognition summary

• parallel activation• continuous processing• lexical competition• fine-grained evaluation

words influence phonemes

• ganong effect

• phonemic restoration

ganong effect

• the lexical status of the endpoints of anambiguous sound influences yourperception

phonemic restoration(warren)

• normal• no “s”, just noise• no “s”, just silence

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final summary

• speech perception– lack of invariance– nonlinear

• word recognition– parallel activation– incremental– fine-grained

• lexical feedback