Auditory representations and phonological illusions: A linguist’s perspective on the neuropsychological bases of speech perception

Is there a bilingual advantage in phonetic and phonological acquisition? The initial learning of word-final coronal stop realization in a novel accent of English

“…A specific example is that of the It is the case, however, that Italian speakers can eventually learn the new sound [ae] and produce native-like forms. This, according to Calabrese (2012), is largely due to the existence of two modes of speech perception: phonemic and phonetic. When subjects perceive stimuli according to native-language phonological categories, they are demonstrating 'phonemic' perception.…”

Toward a neural theory of language: Old issues and new perspectives

“…At the basis of this different program of research, the authors suggested the following questions: what are the primitives for speech, and how can we build defensible linking hypotheses that bridge these domains? Consequently, three steps were discussed because they are essential for transforming signals into interpretable internal representations: (i) multi-time resolution processing in the auditory cortex as a computational strategy to fractionate the signal into appropriate 'temporal primitives' that are commensurate with concurrently processing the auditory input on a segmental and a syllabic scale; (ii) analysis-by-synthesis as a computational (algorithmic) strategy linking top-down and bottom-up operations in the auditory cortex, which is conceptually related to the idea of internal forward models in cognitive neuroscience and to the Bayesian classification approach in the terminology of automatic speech recognition (see also Poeppel & Monahan, 2011); and (iii) the construction of abstract representations (distinctive features) that form the computational basis for both lexical representation and transformations between sensory and motor coordinates in speech processing (see Calabrese, 2012, for an alternative proposal).…”

“…It therefore seems highly possible that motor control, grammatical processing and other kinds of cognitive abilities are executed in the brain in real time (for example, see the discussion in Bromberger & Halle, 2000;Calabrese, 2005;Calabrese, 2012). From this point of view, representations do not derive from neurally produced computations; instead they are the same entity differently realized by the dynamic, distributed and continuously interconnected cortical and subcortical activities of the brain at spatial and temporal levels.…”

The Phonetics-Phonology Relationship in the Neurobiology of Language

“…Yet, the discrimination of the allophonic contrast indicates that also allophones -generated by specific rules of the grammar -are part of the knowledge of speakers and then of their memory representations. Thus, according to Calabrese (2012), the auditory cortex may have two 'modes' of perceiving speech: phonological perception (faster as it picks out from deeper language knowledge) and phonetic perception (slower as it refers to low-level acoustic properties only).…”