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SUMMARY:Contributions of phonetic detail to understanding speech processin
 g - Prof Sarah Hawkins (Department of Linguistics\, University of Cambridg
 e)
DTSTART:20080522T160000Z
DTEND:20080522T173000Z
UID:TALK7836@talks.cam.ac.uk
CONTACT:Christopher Lucas
DESCRIPTION:An accumulating body of experimental evidence shows that detai
 led acoustic patterns systematically indicate not just the phonological st
 ructure of citation-form lexical items\, but also a wealth of other lingui
 stic and\ninteractional information. Listeners learn about these cues to t
 he meaning of utterances\, use them to understand meaning in at least some
  conditions\, and can adapt rapidly to their statistical distribution. Suc
 h systematic patterns are widespread in normal speech\, but some are rarer
  in standard read 'laboratory speech'. Some of the distinctions are easy t
 o hear\, others are very hard to hear but nevertheless influence perceptua
 l decisions\, especially under adverse listening conditions such as in noi
 se (when\, interestingly\, they would be expected to be even harder to hea
 r). Some seem\nto have relatively restricted linguistic functions\, while 
 others have multiple linguistic functions. One implication is that underst
 anding speech involves identification of many different types of unit\, no
 ne of which is primary\, and all of which may feed off one another. This a
 nd other evidence supports the claim that speech sounds can be mapped onto
  any level of\nlinguistic structure\, in parallel or in sequence\, using c
 ontext-dependent probabilistic processes. If this is the case\, then the p
 rocess of speech perception is governed by the properties of the particula
 r signal in\nconjunction with the listener's construal of the particular s
 ituation: thus understanding how speech is processed requires understandin
 g the context\, the task\, and the listener's past experience and current 
 expectations. These and other points raise questions about the status of t
 heoretical constructs such as the mental lexicon. To account for the plast
 icity and task-oriented use of phonetic detail\, a fundamental issue may b
 e whether conceptualisation of 'static' linguistic structure should be rep
 laced by a function- or process-oriented framework. For speaker-hearers\, 
 this may mean that linguistic knowledge is not necessarily distinct from o
 ther knowledge\, but essentially embodied\, and constantly in flux.\n
LOCATION:GR06-7\, English Faculty\, 9 West Road (Sidgwick Site)
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