Gradient effects of within-category phonetic variation on lexical access

McMurray, Bob; Tanenhaus, Michael K.; Aslin, Richard Ν.

doi:10.1016/s0010-0277(02)00157-9

Cited by 323 publications

(466 citation statements)

References 27 publications

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“…Past research has labeled the case of strong categorical effects of stop consonants as categorical perception and the case of weak categorical effects observed in vowel perception as the perceptual magnet effect. More recent research has demonstrated qualitative similarities across consonant and vowel perception by showing that there is a continuous aspect to consonant perception (Andruski et al, 1994;McMurray et al, 2002;Miller, 1997) and a categorical aspect to vowel perception (Gerrits and Schouten, 2004;Stevens, 1966), but the literature has not provided strong evidence that the differences between them can be accounted for within a unified framework. Our work fills this gap by showing that the same principled mathematical model provides a close match to both identification and discrimination data from both consonants and vowels.…”

Section: Discussionmentioning

confidence: 99%

A unified account of categorical effects in phonetic perception

2016

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Categorical effects are found across speech sound categories, with the degree of these effects ranging from extremely strong categorical perception in consonants to nearly continuous perception in vowels. We show that both strong and weak categorical effects can be captured by a unified model. We treat speech perception as a statistical inference problem, assuming that listeners use their knowledge of categories as well as the acoustics of the signal to infer the intended productions of the speaker. Simulations show that the model provides close fits to empirical data, unifying past findings of categorical effects in consonants and vowels and capturing differences in the degree of categorical effects through a single parameter.

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Section: Discussionmentioning

confidence: 99%

A unified account of categorical effects in phonetic perception

2016

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“…H2 states that the direction of such misidentification is biased by the relative frequency of occurrence of the short and long phonemes in the region of durational overlap. This hypothesis falls out of a growing body of evidence that phonemic decisions are probabilistic and sensitive to the distributional properties of phonemes in the phonetic space (McMurray, Tanenhaus, and Aslin 2002;Clayards et al 2008;Feldman, Griffiths, and Morgan 2009;Kirby 2010).…”

Section: The Direction Of Phonemic Length Misidentificationmentioning

confidence: 99%

An explanation for phonological word-final vowel shortening: Evidence from Tokyo Japanese

Nakai

2013

Laboratory Phonology

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This paper offers an account for the cross-linguistic prevalence of phonological word-final vowel shortening, in the face of phonetic final lengthening, also commonly observed across languages. Two contributing factors are hypothesized: (1) an overlap in the durational distributions of short and long vowel phonemes across positions in the utterance can lead to the misidentification of phonemic vowel length and (2) the direction of bias in such misidentification is determined by the distributional properties of the short and long vowel phonemes in the region of the durational overlap. Because short vowel phonemes are typically more frequent in occurrence and less variable in duration than long vowel phonemes, long vowel phonemes are more likely to be misidentified than short vowel phonemes. Results of production and perception studies in Tokyo Japanese support these hypotheses.Satsuki Nakai: Queen Margaret University. E-mail: satsuki@ovod.net IntroductionFinal lengthening, i.e., phonetic lengthening of final elements of prosodic constituents such as the phrase and utterance, is a putative language universal found in many languages, including languages with phonemic vowel length contrasts such as Dinka (Remijsen and Gilley 2008), Estonian (Krull 1997), Finnish (Nakai et al. 2009), and Hungarian (Hockey andFagyal 1999;White and Mády 2008). Curiously, in many languages with a phonemic vowel length contrast, word-final vowel length neutralization is also commonly observed towards the short vowel phoneme (see, e.g., Buckley 1998; Myers and Hansen 2007). Myers and Hansen (2007) ask how such length neutralization often arises in the face of crosslinguistically prevalent phonetic final lengthening. Why do word-final vowels tend to be neutralized towards the short vowel phoneme if they are often in a position to be lengthened phonetically? As a solution to the apparent paradox, Myers and Hansen (2007) propose that utterance-final devoicing, reported for Unauthenticated Download Date | 5/11/18 8:46 PM 514 Satsuki Nakai various languages, may be responsible for the cross-linguistic tendency for phonological word-final vowel shortening. Myers and Hansen's (2007) proposal is based on their finding that the devoiced ending of a partially devoiced vowel is disregarded by the listener in phonemic length identification, producing perceptual shortening. This scenario may be a likely one for some languages that exhibit phonological word-final shortening, but not all, e.g., Tokyo Japanese, as we see below.In this paper, I will present an alternative account to Myers and Hansen's (2007) for the apparent paradox between the cross-linguistic tendency for phonetic final lengthening and phonological word-final vowel shortening. I will argue that the paradox is resolved by postulating two hypotheses:H1: Short and long phonemes of similar durations across positions in the utterance can produce perceptual ambiguity for these phonemes. H2: When phonemic length misidentification occurs due to distributional overlap in the durations...

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“…Ces résultats sont en accord avec des études récentes montrant un rôle de l'information acoustico-phonétique détaillée dans l'accès au lexique (Dahan, Magnuson, Tanenhaus & Hogan, 2001 ;Davis, MarslenWilson & Gaskell, 2002 ;McMurray et al, 2002), et plus particulière-ment dans la segmentation de séquences ambiguës au niveau segmental (Mattys & Melhorn, 2007 ;Salverda et al, 2003 ;Shatzman & McQueen, 2006). Ces résultats sont également en accord avec l'étude de mouvements oculaires de Shatzman et McQueen (2006).…”

Section: Discussionunclassified

“…5 millisecondes) de VOT à l'intérieur d'une même catégorie segmentale (p.ex. soit /b/, soit /p/) (McMurray, Tanenhaus & Aslin, 2002). Cette méthodologie a également été employée avec succès afin d'examiner le rôle de différents facteurs dans la segmentation de la parole (Salverda, Dahan & McQueen, 2003 ;Tremblay, 2009Tremblay, , 2011Tremblay & Spinelli, sous presse).…”

Section: Introductionunclassified

La liaison : approches contemporaines

2014

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Gradient effects of within-category phonetic variation on lexical access

Cited by 323 publications

References 27 publications

A unified account of categorical effects in phonetic perception

A unified account of categorical effects in phonetic perception

An explanation for phonological word-final vowel shortening: Evidence from Tokyo Japanese

La liaison : approches contemporaines

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