Abstract
Coarticulatory acoustic variation is presumed to be caused by temporally overlapping linguistically significant gestures of the vocal tract. The complex acoustic consequences of such gestures can be hypothesized to specify them without recourse to context-sensitive representations of phonetic segments. When the consequences of separate gestures converge on a common acoustic dimension (e.g., fundamental frequency), perceptual parsing of the acoustic consequences of overlapping spoken gestures, rather than associations of acoustic features, is required to resolve the distinct gestural events. Direct tests of this theory were conducted. These tests revealed mutual influences of (1) fundamental frequency during a vowel on prior consonant perception, and (2) consonant identity on following vowel stress and pitch perception. The results of these converging tests lead to the conclusion that speech perception involves a process in which acoustic information for coarticulated gestures is parsed from the stream of speech.
Article PDF
Similar content being viewed by others
References
Diehl, R. L., &Kluender, K. R. (1989a). On the objects of speech perception.Ecological Psychology,1, 121–144.
Diehl, R. L., &Kluender, K. R. (1989b). Reply to commentaries.Ecological Psychology,1, 195–225.
Diehl, R. L., &Molis, M. R. (1995). Effect of fundamental frequency on medial [+voice]/[+voice] judgments.Phonetica,52, 188–195.
Elman, J. L., &McClelland, J. L. (1986). Exploiting lawful variability in the speech wave. In J. S. Perkell & D. H. Klatt (Eds.),Invariance and variability in speech processes (pp. 360–385). Hillsdale, NJ: Erlbaum.
Fowler, C. A. (1980). Coarticulation and theories of extrinsic timing.Journal of Phonetics,8, 113–133.
Fowler, C. A. (1981). Production and perception of coarticulation among stressed and unstressed vowels.Journal of Speech & Hearing Research,46, 127–139.
Fowler, C. A. (1983). Realism and unrealism: A reply.Journal of Phonetics,11, 303–322.
Fowler, C. A. (1984). Segmentation of coarticulated speech in perception.Perception & Psychophysics,36, 359–368.
Fowler, C. A. (1995). Acoustic and kinematic correlates of contrastive stress accent in spoken English. In F. Bell-Berti & L. Raphael (Eds.),Producing speech: Contemporary issues (pp. 355–373). New York: American Institute of Physics.
Fowler, C. A. (1996). Listeners do hear sounds, not tongues.Journal of the Acoustical Society of America,99, 1730–1741.
Fowler, C. A., &Brown, J. M. (1997). Intrinsic f 0 differences in spoken and sung vowels and their perception by listeners.Perception & Psychophysics,59, 729–738.
Fowler, C. A., &Saltzman, E. (1993). Coordination and coarticulation in speech production.Language & Speech,36, 171–195.
Fowler, C. A., &Smith, M. R. (1986). Speech perception as vector analysis: An approach to the problem of invariance and segmentation. In J. S. Perkell & D. H. Klatt (Eds.),Invariance and variability in speech processes (pp. 123–139). Hillsdale, NJ: Erlbaum.
Haggard, M. [P.], Summerfield, [A.] Q., &Roberts, M. (1981). Psychoacoustical and cultural determinants of phoneme boundaries: Evidence from trading Fo cues in the voiced-voiceless distinction.Journal of Phonetics,9, 49–62.
Hombert, J. M. (1978). Consonant types, vowel quality, and tone. In V. A. Fromkin (Ed.),Tone: A linguistic survey (pp. 77–112). New York: Academic Press.
Kelso, J. A. S., Tuller, B., Vatikiotis-Bateson, E., &Fowler, C. A. (1984). Functionally specific articulatory cooperation following jaw perturbations during speech: Evidence for coordinative structures.Journal of Experimental Psychology: Human Perception & Performance,10, 812–832.
Kingston, J., &Diehl, R. L. (1994). Phonetic knowledge.Language,70, 419–454.
Kluender, K. R. (1994). Speech perception as a tractable problem in cognitive science. In M. A. Gernsbacher (Ed.),Handbook of psycholinguistics (pp. 173–217). San Diego: Academic Press.
Kluender, K. R., Diehl, R. L., &Killeen, P. R. (1987). Japanese quail can learn phonetic categories.Science,237, 1195–1197.
Kuhl, P. K. (1987). The special-mechanisms debate in speech research: Categorization tests on animals and infants. In S. Harnad (Ed.),Categorical perception (pp. 355–386). New York: Cambridge University Press.
Lehiste, I. (1970).Suprasegmentals. Cambridge, MA: MIT Press.
Lehiste, I., &Peterson, G. E. (1961). Some basic considerations in the analysis of intonation.Journal of the Acoustical Society of America,33, 419–475.
Liberman, A. M., Cooper, F. S., Shankweiler, D. P., &Studdert-Kennedy, M. (1967). Perception of the speech code.Psychological Review,74, 431–461.
Löfqvist, A., Baer, T., McGarr, N. S., &Seider Story, R. (1989). The cricothyroid muscle in voicing control.Journal of the Acoustical Society of America,85, 1314–1321.
Löfqvist, A., McGarr, N. S., &Honda, K. (1984). Laryngeal muscle and articulatory control.Journal of the Acoustical Society of America,76, 951–954.
Remez, R. E. (1994). A guide to research on the perception of speech. In M. A. Gernsbacher (Ed.),Handbook of psycholinguistics (pp. 145–172). San Diego: Academic Press.
Rubin, P. E. (1995). HADES: A case study of the development of a signal analysis system. In A. Syrdal, R. Bennett, & S. Greenspan (Eds.),Applied signal technology (pp. 501–520). Boca Raton, FL: CRC Press.
Samuel, A. G. (1981). The role of bottom-up confirmation in the phonemic restoration illusion.Journal of Experimental Psychology: Human Perception & Performance,7, 1124–1131.
Samuel, A. G., &Newport, E. L. (1979). Adaptation of speech by nonspeech: Evidence for complex cue detectors.Journal of Experimental Psychology: Human Perception & Performance,5, 563–578.
Sawusch, J. R., &Gagnon, D. A. (1995). Auditory coding, cues, and coherence in phonetic perception.Journal of Experimental Psychology: Human Perception & Performance,21, 635–652.
Silverman, K. E. A. (1986).F0 segmental cues depend on intonation: The case of the rise after voiced stops.Phonetica,43, 76–91.
Silverman, K. E. A. (1987).The structure and processing of fundamental frequency contours. Unpublished doctoral dissertation, Cambridge University.
Stevens, K. N., &Blumstein, S. E. (1981). The search for invariant acoustic correlates of phonetic features. In P. D. Eimas & J. L. Miller (Eds.),Perspectives on the study of speech (pp. 1–38). Hillsdale, NJ: Erlbaum.
Turvey, M. T. (1990). Coordination.American Psychologist,45, 938–953.
Whalen, D. H., Abramson, A. S., Lisker, L., &Mody, M. (1990). Gradient effects of fundamental frequency on stop consonant voicing judgments.Phonetica,47, 36–49.
Author information
Authors and Affiliations
Corresponding author
Additional information
This research was supported in part by NICHD Grant HD-01994 to Haskins Laboratories.
Rights and permissions
About this article
Cite this article
Pardo, J.S., Fowler, C.A. Perceiving the causes of coarticulatory acoustic variation: Consonant voicing and vowel pitch. Perception & Psychophysics 59, 1141–1152 (1997). https://doi.org/10.3758/BF03205527
Received:
Accepted:
Issue Date:
DOI: https://doi.org/10.3758/BF03205527