The Speech Processing Lexicon: Neurocognitive and Behavioural Approaches

266 Pages·2017·2.548 MB·English

by  Aditi Lahiri (editor), Sandra Kotzor (editor)

Aditi Lahiri and Sandra Kotzor (Eds.)
The Speech Processing Lexicon
Phonology and Phonetics
Editor
Aditi Lahiri
Volume 22
The Speech
Processing Lexicon
Neurocognitive and Behavioural Approaches
Edited by
Aditi Lahiri and Sandra Kotzor
ISBN 978-3-11-042573-4
e-ISBN (PDF) 978-3-11-042265-8
e-ISBN (EPUB) 978-3-11-042277-1
ISSN 1861–4191
Library of Congress Cataloging-in-Publication Data
A CIP catalog record for this book has been applied for at the Library of Congress.
Bibliografische Information der Deutschen Nationalbibliothek
The Deutsche Nationalbibliothek lists this publication in the Deutschen Nationalbibliografie;
detailed bibliographic data are available on the internet http://dnb.dnb.de.
© 2017 Walter de Gruyter GmbH, Berlin/Boston
Typesetting: Kovertus, Haarlem
Printing and binding: CPI books GmbH, Leck
♾ Printed on acid-free paper
Printed in Germany
www.degruyter.com
In acknowledgement of her continuing achievements and
with deep gratitude for her inspiration—
To one of the contributors, the rest would
like to dedicate this book:
Sheila Blumstein

Table of Contents
Allard Jongman and Aditi Lahiri
Introduction   1
Sheila E. Blumstein
Phonetic categories and phonological features: Evidence from the cognitive
neuroscience of language   4
Allard Jongman and Bob McMurray
On invariance: Acoustic input meets listener expectations   21
Emily Myers, Alexis R. Johns, F. Sayako Earle and Xin Xie
The invariance problem in the acquisition of non-native phonetic contrasts:
From instances to categories   52
Sandra Kotzor, Allison Wetterlin and Aditi Lahiri
Symmetry or asymmetry: Evidence for underspecification in the mental
lexicon   85
Julia R. Drouin, Nicholas R. Monto and Rachel M. Theodore
Talker-specificity effects in spoken language processing: Now you see them,
now you don’t   107
Chao-Yang Lee
Processing acoustic variability in lexical tone perception   129
Sara Guediche
Flexible and adaptive processes in speech perception   155
Jack Ryalls and Rosalie Perkins
Foreign accent syndrome: Phonology or phonetics?   187
Joan A. Sereno
How category learning occurs in adults and children   193
VIII   Table of Contents
Vipul Arora and Henning Reetz
Automatic speech recognition: What phonology can offer   211
Eiling Yee
Fluid semantics: Semantic knowledge is experience-based
and dynamic   236
Subject index   256
Allard Jongman and Aditi Lahiri
Introduction
This special volume celebrates Sheila Blumstein’s many and sustained contribu-
tions to our understanding of language, and in particular, phonological process-
ing. Professor Blumstein has devoted her career to understanding how speech is
produced, perceived, and represented in the brain. Working with the legendary
Roman Jakobson at Harvard University, she obtained her doctorate in Linguis-
tics in 1970 with a ground-breaking dissertation that investigated the phonology
of speech patterns in aphasic patients. This work was based on observations of
sound substitutions and errors in patient interviews. Published as a book by
Mouton in 1973, A Phonological Investigation of Aphasic Speech clearly indicated
the focus of her research: the representation of speech and language in the brain.
Within a few years, Professor Blumstein extended her interests to the acoustics
and perception of speech, beginning a long-time collaboration with Ken Stevens
at MIT. This turned into a very fruitful partnership, leading to seminal work on the
theory of acoustic invariance. This research showed that the mapping between
acoustic properties and perceived phonetic categories is richer, and more consis-
tent and invariant, than previously thought, a finding which necessitated a new
conception of the relation between the production and perception of speech. It is
important to note that at the time that Professor Blumstein started investigating
the speech signal in the 1970s, the prevalent scientific opinion was that there was
no simple mapping between acoustic signal and perceived phonemes because
the speech signal was too variable. Acoustic properties were strongly affected
by contextual factors such as variations in speaker, speaking rate, and phonetic
environment. Careful consideration of Fant’s acoustic theory of speech produc-
tion led her to the hypothesis that invariant acoustic properties could be found
in the speech signal. In contrast to previous research that was heavily dependent
on the speech spectrograph and its representation of consonant release bursts
and vocalic formant transitions as distinct acoustic events, Professor Blumstein
focused more on global acoustic properties such as the overall shape of the spec-
trum at the release of the stop consonant. Through careful and detailed acoustic
analysis and subsequent perceptual verification, she uncovered stable invariant
acoustic properties that consistently signaled important linguistic features such
as place and manner of articulation. Professor Blumstein supported these claims
by investigating a variety of speech sound classes (including stop consonants,
Allard Jongman, Department of Linguistics, University of Kansas
Aditi Lahiri, Faculty of Linguistics, Philology and Phonetics, University of Oxford
DOI 10.1515/9783110422658-001
2   Introduction
fricatives, and approximants) in a variety of languages because she fully appreci-
ated that conclusions drawn on the basis of one language can be misleading and
universal generalizations can only be made after crosslinguistic comparisons.
Professor Blumstein’s work on acoustic features resulted in a series of pivotal and
influential publications, co-authored with Ken Stevens and her students.
Professor Blumstein subsequently expanded her investigation to understand
the processes involved in the recognition of words rather than individual speech
sounds. Her research in this domain called for reconsideration of the then domi-
nant view that lexical access proceeds on the basis of categorical phonemes rather
than more fine-grained continuous acoustic information. The fact that subtle
yet systematic acoustic differences can affect activation of word candidates in
the mental lexicon indicated that acoustic information not directly relevant for
phoneme identification is not discarded but is retained and plays a critical role
in word comprehension. This finding provides a crucial piece of evidence in the
ongoing debate about the structure of the mental lexicon.
In parallel to her seminal work on speech acoustics and perception, Professor
Blumstein continued her investigation of language and speech processing impair-
ments in brain-damaged patients which she had started with her dissertation.
She initially collaborated with Harold Goodglass at the Boston VA Medical Center,
who had been a member of her dissertation committee. Goodglass and colleagues
were the first to apply experimental and quantitative methods to the study of the
syntax of agrammatics. Professor Blumstein subsequently focused on speech
processing deficits in aphasics and practically single-handedly launched this
field of research which thrives today. Prior to her research in the 1970s, our under-
standing of the manner in which speech production and perception breaks down
subsequent to focal brain damage was based solely on perceptual judgments
and phonetic transcription – both quite unreliable. She applied her knowledge of
acoustics to speech processing in neurologically-impaired populations, affording
us an entirely new perspective not only on what is going wrong in these individu-
als, but providing insights into component processes of the normal system.
Throughout her career, Professor Blumstein was the principal investigator
on simultaneous long-term grants for her work on acoustics and for her work on
aphasia. In addition to that, she also served as Dean, Interim Provost, and even
Interim President at Brown. However, at heart, Professor Blumstein has continued
to predominantly be a researcher. After her term as Interim President, she spent
a sabbatical leave to master newly developed brain-imaging techniques which
allowed her to answer questions that were previously impossible to tackle. Her
most recent acoustic research uses fMRI to investigate cortical regions involved in
the perception of phonetic category invariance as well as neural systems under-
lying lexical competition.