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Language Acquisition as Complex Category Formation

  • Andrew J. Lotto
Published/Copyright: August 22, 2000
Phonetica
From the journal Phonetica Volume 57 Issue 2-4

Abstract

Purported units of speech, e.g. phonemes or features, are essentially categories. The assignment of phonemic (or phonetic) identity is a process of categorization: potentially discriminable speech sounds are treated in an equivalent manner. Unfortunately the extensive literature on human categorization has typically focused on simple visual categories that are defined by the presence or absence of discrete features. Speech categories are much more complex. They are often defined by continuous values across a variety of imperfectly valid features. In this paper, several kinds of categories are distinguished and studies using human subjects, animal subjects and computational models are presented that endeavor to describe the structure and development of the sort of complex categories underlying speech perception.

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Published Online: 2000-08-22
Published in Print: 2000-12-01

© 2000 S. Karger AG, Basel

Articles in the same Issue

  1. Special Section
  2. Title Page
  3. Foreword
  4. Acoustic Patterning of Speech Its Linguistic and Physiological Bases
  5. Investigating Unscripted Speech: Implications for Phonetics and Phonology
  6. Emotive Transforms
  7. The Source-Filter Frame of Prominence
  8. The C/D Model and Prosodic Control of Articulatory Behavior
  9. Diverse Acoustic Cues at Consonantal Landmarks
  10. Perceptual Processing
  11. Modeling and Perception of ‘Gesture Reduction’
  12. General Auditory Processes Contribute to Perceptual Accommodation of Coarticulation
  13. Adaptive Dispersion in Vowel Perception
  14. Language Acquisition as Complex Category Formation
  15. Biology of Communication and Motor Processes
  16. Singing Birds, Playing Cats, and Babbling Babies: Why Do They Do It?
  17. The Phonetic Potential of Nonhuman Vocal Tracts: Comparative Cineradiographic Observations of Vocalizing Animals
  18. Dynamic Simulation of Human Movement Using Large-Scale Models of the Body
  19. En Route to Adult Spoken Language / Language Development
  20. An Embodiment Perspective on the Acquisition of Speech Perception
  21. Speech to Infants as Hyperspeech: Knowledge-Driven Processes in Early Word Recognition
  22. The Construction of a First Phonology
  23. Auditory Constraints on Sound Structures
  24. Searching for an Auditory Description of Vowel Categories
  25. Commentary
  26. Imitation and the Emergence of Segments
  27. Deriving Speech from Nonspeech: A View from Ontogeny
  28. Paper
  29. Developmental Origins of Adult Phonology: The Interplay between Phonetic Emergents and the Evolutionary Adaptations of Sound Patterns
  30. Further Section
  31. Publications Björn Lindblom
  32. Index autorum Vol. 57, 2000
  33. Contents Vol. 57, 2000
https://doi.org/10.1159/000028472

Articles in the same Issue

  1. Special Section
  2. Title Page
  3. Foreword
  4. Acoustic Patterning of Speech Its Linguistic and Physiological Bases
  5. Investigating Unscripted Speech: Implications for Phonetics and Phonology
  6. Emotive Transforms
  7. The Source-Filter Frame of Prominence
  8. The C/D Model and Prosodic Control of Articulatory Behavior
  9. Diverse Acoustic Cues at Consonantal Landmarks
  10. Perceptual Processing
  11. Modeling and Perception of ‘Gesture Reduction’
  12. General Auditory Processes Contribute to Perceptual Accommodation of Coarticulation
  13. Adaptive Dispersion in Vowel Perception
  14. Language Acquisition as Complex Category Formation
  15. Biology of Communication and Motor Processes
  16. Singing Birds, Playing Cats, and Babbling Babies: Why Do They Do It?
  17. The Phonetic Potential of Nonhuman Vocal Tracts: Comparative Cineradiographic Observations of Vocalizing Animals
  18. Dynamic Simulation of Human Movement Using Large-Scale Models of the Body
  19. En Route to Adult Spoken Language / Language Development
  20. An Embodiment Perspective on the Acquisition of Speech Perception
  21. Speech to Infants as Hyperspeech: Knowledge-Driven Processes in Early Word Recognition
  22. The Construction of a First Phonology
  23. Auditory Constraints on Sound Structures
  24. Searching for an Auditory Description of Vowel Categories
  25. Commentary
  26. Imitation and the Emergence of Segments
  27. Deriving Speech from Nonspeech: A View from Ontogeny
  28. Paper
  29. Developmental Origins of Adult Phonology: The Interplay between Phonetic Emergents and the Evolutionary Adaptations of Sound Patterns
  30. Further Section
  31. Publications Björn Lindblom
  32. Index autorum Vol. 57, 2000
  33. Contents Vol. 57, 2000
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