Imitation and the Emergence of Segments
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Michael Studdert-Kennedy
Abstract
The paper argues that the discrete phonetic segments on which language is raised are subjective gestural structures that emerge ontogenetically (and perhaps emerged evolutionarily) from the process of imitating a quasi-continuous acoustic signal with a neuroanatomically segmented and somatotopically organized vocal machinery. Evidence cited for somatotopic organization includes the perceptual salience in the speech signal of information specifying place of articulation, as revealed both by sine wave speech and by the pattern of errors in children’s early words.Copyright © 2000 S. Karger AG, Basel‘Almost every insight gained by modern linguistics, from Grimm’s Law to Jakobson’s distinctive features, depends crucially on the assumption that speech is a sequence of discrete entities.’Morris Halle [1964, p. 325]
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© 2000 S. Karger AG, Basel
Artikel in diesem Heft
- Special Section
- Title Page
- Foreword
- Acoustic Patterning of Speech Its Linguistic and Physiological Bases
- Investigating Unscripted Speech: Implications for Phonetics and Phonology
- Emotive Transforms
- The Source-Filter Frame of Prominence
- The C/D Model and Prosodic Control of Articulatory Behavior
- Diverse Acoustic Cues at Consonantal Landmarks
- Perceptual Processing
- Modeling and Perception of ‘Gesture Reduction’
- General Auditory Processes Contribute to Perceptual Accommodation of Coarticulation
- Adaptive Dispersion in Vowel Perception
- Language Acquisition as Complex Category Formation
- Biology of Communication and Motor Processes
- Singing Birds, Playing Cats, and Babbling Babies: Why Do They Do It?
- The Phonetic Potential of Nonhuman Vocal Tracts: Comparative Cineradiographic Observations of Vocalizing Animals
- Dynamic Simulation of Human Movement Using Large-Scale Models of the Body
- En Route to Adult Spoken Language / Language Development
- An Embodiment Perspective on the Acquisition of Speech Perception
- Speech to Infants as Hyperspeech: Knowledge-Driven Processes in Early Word Recognition
- The Construction of a First Phonology
- Auditory Constraints on Sound Structures
- Searching for an Auditory Description of Vowel Categories
- Commentary
- Imitation and the Emergence of Segments
- Deriving Speech from Nonspeech: A View from Ontogeny
- Paper
- Developmental Origins of Adult Phonology: The Interplay between Phonetic Emergents and the Evolutionary Adaptations of Sound Patterns
- Further Section
- Publications Björn Lindblom
- Index autorum Vol. 57, 2000
- Contents Vol. 57, 2000
Artikel in diesem Heft
- Special Section
- Title Page
- Foreword
- Acoustic Patterning of Speech Its Linguistic and Physiological Bases
- Investigating Unscripted Speech: Implications for Phonetics and Phonology
- Emotive Transforms
- The Source-Filter Frame of Prominence
- The C/D Model and Prosodic Control of Articulatory Behavior
- Diverse Acoustic Cues at Consonantal Landmarks
- Perceptual Processing
- Modeling and Perception of ‘Gesture Reduction’
- General Auditory Processes Contribute to Perceptual Accommodation of Coarticulation
- Adaptive Dispersion in Vowel Perception
- Language Acquisition as Complex Category Formation
- Biology of Communication and Motor Processes
- Singing Birds, Playing Cats, and Babbling Babies: Why Do They Do It?
- The Phonetic Potential of Nonhuman Vocal Tracts: Comparative Cineradiographic Observations of Vocalizing Animals
- Dynamic Simulation of Human Movement Using Large-Scale Models of the Body
- En Route to Adult Spoken Language / Language Development
- An Embodiment Perspective on the Acquisition of Speech Perception
- Speech to Infants as Hyperspeech: Knowledge-Driven Processes in Early Word Recognition
- The Construction of a First Phonology
- Auditory Constraints on Sound Structures
- Searching for an Auditory Description of Vowel Categories
- Commentary
- Imitation and the Emergence of Segments
- Deriving Speech from Nonspeech: A View from Ontogeny
- Paper
- Developmental Origins of Adult Phonology: The Interplay between Phonetic Emergents and the Evolutionary Adaptations of Sound Patterns
- Further Section
- Publications Björn Lindblom
- Index autorum Vol. 57, 2000
- Contents Vol. 57, 2000
