Internal structure of phonetic categories: Evidence for within-category trading relations

Abstract

Phonetically relevant acoustic properties perceptually trade against each other at phonetic category boundaries. The present investigation used a category goodness judgment task to examine whether such properties also trade against each other in specifying the best exemplars of phonetic categories. The experiments focused on the say–stay distinction, specified by F1 onset frequency and silence duration preceding F1 onset. The main experiment demonstrated a within-category trading relation, such that as F1 onset frequency increased from 230 to 430 Hz a longer silence was required for stimuli to be judged the best exemplars of stay. Two follow-up experiments explored the robustness of this effect. Taken together, the findings underscore the importance of multiple acoustic properties in specifying the internal structure of phonetic categories.

Contextual influences on the internal structure of phonetic categories: A distinction between lexical status and speaking rate

“…This difference in height between the two functions may have occurred because of a tendency for the subjects to rate stimuli more favorably when in a real-word context than when in a nonword context (peace vs. peef ). We have also found differences in the relative height of functions in some of our previous studies involving acousticphonetic contextual variables (Hodgson & Miller, 1996;Volaitis & Miller, 1992;Wayland et al, 1994), but in each case, as in the present study, the differences in height were not critical to the purpose of the investigation. As was outlined above, our question concerns the locations of the best-exemplar ranges and boundary indices along the VOT continuum.…”

“…Thus, the best exemplars of the perceptual category track the acousticphonetic variation associated with speaking rate in speech production. Similar parallels between speech production and the location of the best exemplars of the corresponding perceptual category have also been found for other acoustic-phonetic contextual factors so far examined (Volaitis & Miller, 1992;Wayland et al, 1994; and see Hodgson & Miller, 1996, for a similar productionbased best-exemplar shift due to within-category trading relations). These findings are consistent with the view that perceptual shifts in the location of best exemplars arise from a perceptual mechanism that operates so as to track acoustic-phonetic variation in production.…”

“…In a recent series of studies, we reported that acoustic-phonetic contextual factors also alter which stimuli within a category are perceived as the best category exemplars (e.g., Miller et al, 1997;Miller & Volaitis, 1989;Volaitis & Miller, 1992;Wayland et al, 1994; see also Hodgson & Miller, 1996). The main objective of the present investigation was to determine whether a higher order linguistic factor, lexical status, which is known to alter category boundary location (Ganong, 1980), also alters the location of the best exemplars of a category.…”

“…The remaining 2 subjects did not show this pattern and were excluded from the analyses reported below. 4 Following previous work in our laboratory using the goodnessrating paradigm (e.g., Hodgson & Miller, 1996;Miller & Volaitis, 1989;Volaitis & Miller, 1992), we quantified the effect of lexical status on the best exemplars of the category in terms of a bestexemplar range, defined as the range of VOT values for which the ratings were at least 90% of the maximal rating. The lower and upper limits of the best-exemplar range were calculated for the 18 subjects included in the analyses for both of the smoothed goodness functions in the following manner.…”

Feature parsing: Feature cue mapping in spoken word recognition

“…Each of these cues occurs at a different time in the speech stream. When listeners recognize speech, the interpretation of one feature cue appears to be modulated by the value of other cues to that feature (Best, Morrongiello, & Robson, 1981;Hodgson & Miller, 1996;Parker, Diehl, & Kluender, 1986;Repp, 1982;Sinnott & Saporita, 2000;Summerfield & Haggard, 1977;Treisman, 1999). The existence of such trading relationships suggests that the listener integrates temporally dispersed cues to the same feature.…”