http://www.bsos.umd.edu/hesp/hesp300nbr/WKBKCHAP1.

HTM
CHAPTER ONE:
AN INTRODUCTION TO PSYCHOLINGUISTICS:
WHAT DO LANGUAGE USERS KNOW?
CHAPTER OUTLINE
INTRODUCTION
WHAT IS PSYCHOLINGUISTICS?
The Domain of Psycholinguistic Inquiry
LANGUAGE
What is Language?
Is Language Species-Specific?
Distinguishing Between Language and Speech
WHAT SPEAKERS AND LISTENERS KNOW: A BRIEF SURVEY OF
LINGUISTICS
Levels of Language Analysis
Phonology
Sequences of Sounds: Phonotactics
The Lexicon and Semantics
Morphology: The Study of Word Formation
Syntax: Combining Words to Form Sentences
Pragmatics and Discourse
Metalinguistic Capacity: The Ability to Analyze Our Own Language
LANGUAGE DIVERSITY AND UNIVERSALS
Oral and Signed Languages
Written Language
THE EVOLUTION OF PSYCHOLINGUISTIC INQUIRY
THE ACQUISITION OF LANGUAGE BY CHILDREN
KEY CONCEPTS
I. Language is one of the most basic elements of human existence. Although
language is normally an effortless part of everyday life, its production,
comprehension, and acquisition are based upon complicated mental processes.
The goal of psycholinguistics is to explore and understand these processes.
(Pages 2-3)
II. All human languages are structured symbolic systems with conventions or
rules governing a number of subsystems, including:
A. phonology
B. morphology
C. the lexicon
D. semantics
E. syntax
F. pragmatics (Pages 2-3)
III. The ultimate goal of psycholinguistic inquiry is to develop an integrated
account of language use and understanding. The field covers four basic fields:
A. Language comprehension; including speech perception, lexical access,
sentence processing, and discourse. Concerns relevant to written language
are also part of this domain. (Page 3)
B. Speech production; the study of how concepts are put into linguistic form. To
gain insight into these processes, investigators often must deduce probable
conclusions from speakers' mistakes, including hesitations, pausal
phenomena and speech disfluencies. (Page 4)
C. Language Acquisition; how children learn to produce and understand
language, or developmental psycholinguistics. (Page 4)
D. A final area relevant to the study of psycholinguistics concerns the search for
neurological bases of human language functioning. Neurolinguistics
investigates the anatomical and physiological correlates of language behaviors.
(Page 4)
IV. Human language, unlike the communication systems of animals, is
characterized by hierarchical structure making it infinitely creative and able to
express the full range of speakers' experiences. Language is also governed by
rules that are arbitrary in nature. The words of a language are symbols that are
also arbitrary. Characteristics shared by all languages (such as the categories
noun and verb) are known as language universals. (Pages 5-6)
V. True language is considered a uniquely human behavior. Virtually all humans
spontaneously acquire language without overt instruction. Many other species
have fairly complex communication systems, and some animals (particularly
primates) have been able to learn to use human language. However, animal
communication remains context or stimulus driven. For this reason, language is
considered species-specific. (Page 6)
VI. Although most languages in the world are spoken languages, language is
not the same as speech. A number of languages are signed or gestural, and
these languages (American Sign Language is an example) embody all of the
basic linguistic features of spoken languages. (Page 7)
VII. Linguistics is concerned primarily with the structure of a particular language,
or of languages in general. As a science, it is descriptive rather that prescriptive.
Linguists attempt to account for what people actually say and find acceptable
(or well-formed) rather than to formulate language rules that we must live by.
(Page 7)
VIII. Language understanding is dependent upon a number of smaller tasks.
These are:
A. recognizing the sounds of the message
B. identifying the words in the message and associating them with their
meanings
C. analyzing the grammatical structure of the message
D. interpreting the message in its context (Page 8)
IX. Every human language may be analyzed in terms of its phonology,
morphology, lexicon, syntax, semantics and pragmatics. These elements
interact with one another in complex ways, and many aspects of our linguistic
knowledge are subconscious in nature. (Page 8)
X. Part of language understanding relies upon phonology, or recognition of the
particular sounds used in a language. Any single language usually employs a
subset of approximately 23 consonants and 9 vowels. These distinctive sounds
in a language are its phonemes. Phonemes are contrastive: changing from one
to another within a word produces either a change in meaning or a non-word.
(Pages 8-9)
XI. Speakers of a language must be able to produce all the meaningful sound
contrasts in a language, and know which sound contrasts are not meaningful.
Words that differ in only one phoneme are minimal pairs (they have one
contrasting phoneme). Some sounds are separate allophones of the same
phoneme. Phonemes that are separate in some languages are allophones in
others, and vice versa. (Pages 9-10)
XII. Although competent speakers of a language have no trouble recognizing
allophones as variations of the same phoneme, the variety of different sounds
encompassed by a single phoneme complicates such tasks as programming
computers to understand speech. (Pages 10-12)
XIII. An understanding of phonology encompasses an understanding of
phonotactics: the permissible sequences of sounds and the rules for
combining sounds in a language. The final phonological task is the
interpretation of prosody: intonation and stress patterns. (Page 12-13)
XIV. Each languages has its own lexicon, or dictionary of words. A competent
speaker-hearer possesses a vast mental lexicon. Semantics is the study of
word meaning and the ways in which words are related in the mental lexicon.
(Page 13)
XV. The meaning of a word is not so simply explained as it might appear.
Linguists categorize words as content words (words with external referential
meaning) or function words (words that serve particular functions within the
sentence by making the relations between the content words clear.) While the
meaning of content words can be easy to define, the same cannot always be
said of function words. (Pages 13-14)
XVI. In linguistics, the smallest meaningful unit in a language is a morpheme. A
free morpheme is one that can stand by itself. A bound morpheme (such as a
suffix) cannot stand alone. When certain morphemes are added to words, they
change the word meaning or part of speech: these are called derivational
morphemes and can be used to create new words. Inflectional morphemes,
on the other hand, provide additional information about a word or its
grammatical function. (Pages 14-15)
XVII. The rules for combining words into grammatical sentences depends upon
syntax. English syntax is often highly dependent upon word order: changing
word order can completely change the meaning of a sentence. Because the
typical word order in English is subject-verb-object, English is sometimes called
an S-V-O language. Some 75% of the world's languages are either S-V-O or S-
O-V languages. Some languages are V-O-S or V-S-O, but O-V-S languages are
quite rare. (Pages 16-17)
XVIII. Languages that are less dependent on word order express differences in
sentence meaning with bound morphemes such as affixes to mark grammatical
roles in a sentence. (Page 17)
XIX. Words in a sentence may be combined together to form constituents that
can be combined into larger and larger units (such as clauses) that may be
embedded within one another to form complex sentences of almost infinite
length. Linguists describe the creativity of a natural language in terms of
recursion: the ability to create new sentences by recursively embedding a new
constituent into an existing constituent of the same type. (Page 19)
XX. Another type of linguistic creativity is found in coordinate sentences in
which complete sentences are conjoined linearly. The ability to break sentences
down into constituents makes it possible for us to understand or produce novel
utterances. Our understanding of the rules that govern word combinations
makes it possible for us to produce an endless number of comprehensible and
well-formed sentences. (Pages 19-20)
XXI. Over the years, linguists have explored possible universal rules or
grammars for language production and comprehension. In order to be
meaningful, these rules would have to be learnable, and they would also need
to capture common features of the grammars of all languages (Pages 19-20)
XXII. Linguist Noam Chomsky developed the theory of Transformational
Generative (TG) Grammar, which is now known as the Standard Theory. He
suggested that knowledge of the grammar of one's language consists of an
abstract system of rules and principles that make up a speaker's grammatical
competence. Competence is distinct from the actual use of language, or
performance. (Page 20)
XXIII. According to the Standard Theory of TG grammar, language consists of
deep structures (underlying meanings) and surface structures (the final
spoken or written form of the utterance.) Grammatical rules can be divided into
phrase-structure rules and transformational rules. Phrase structure rules specify
the different constituents of a phrase and how they might combine to form the
surface structure of a sentence. Transformational rules govern how structures
may be modified without altering deep structures, by, for example, changing an
utterance from active to passive voice. (Pages 20-22)
XXIV. The original theory of TG grammar offered the possibility of capturing our
knowledge of language in a precise way, addressing the concepts of infinite
creativity and universality. However, it suffered some learnability problems.
Some of the posited transformational rules were very complicated. Furthermore,
some of these rules were considered obligatory, while others were optional. The
rules seemed too difficult to be mastered by children in a short time. (Page 23)
XXV. TG grammar stated that passives and other constructions take longer to
process than simple sentences because the listener has to "undo" the
transformations used to create these structures. This Derivational Theory of
Complexity (DTC) hypothesis has been only partially supported by
experimental results: more complex sentences do not necessarily take more
time to process. This result may be due to parallel processing effects. (Pages
23-24)
XXVI. In the 1970s and 1980s, TG theory underwent substantial modification.
The major successor to TG theory, Principles and Parameters Theory (PPT)
(a.k.a Government and Binding [GB] theory) retains many of the fundamental
notions of Transformational Grammar. However, in PPT, phrase-structure rules
and transformational rules are greatly streamlined. (Pages 24-25)
XXVII. PPT posits that when elements of a sentence have been moved out of
their regular places, they leave behind a "hole" or a trace in the sentence.
Some research has shown that readers may reactivate this trace to its original
position while reading. PPT also states that the movement of wh- words within a
sentence is governed by Bounding Theory, which only allows them to move to
"local landing sites." (Pages 25-26)
XXVIII. PPT states that the lexicon has a large role in the production of syntax.
According to PPT, words in the lexicon are already associated with a number of
rules governing their appropriate use in sentences. Information associated with
individual words thus takes the place of many of the phrase structure rules
codified by TG theory. (Page 26)
XXIX. PPT attempts to solve the learnability problems of TG by replacing the
transformational rules with a few powerful innate principles called Universal
Grammar (UG). Universal Grammar limits the number of hypotheses the
language learner must choose among in order to understand the grammar of a
language. UG accounts for the differences among languages by positing a
number of parameters in the form of "yes-no" switches that a speaker must
"set" to construct the grammar of her particular language (e.g. the "Null Subject
Parameter" indicating whether a language requires a stated subject [English] or
does not [Italian].) According to PPT theorists, these principles and parameters
are innate. (Pages 26-27)
XXX. Syntactic theorists in the 1990s further streamlined of PPT to come up
with the Minimalist Program. According to this school of thought, d-structure and
s-structure levels have been eliminated, leaving only Phonetic Form and Logical
Form. Other current syntactic theories posit various non-transformational
models, such as Lexical Function Grammar, Construction Grammar and Role
and Reference Grammar. (Page 28)
XXXI. How language is used to accomplish various ends in the world is the
domain of pragmatics, i.e. the appropriate wording and interpretation of
language in a social context. Pragmatics requires that a speaker understand her
audience and tailor the message accordingly -- using indirect, rather than direct
commands as part of a politeness system for example. Knowledge of
pragmatics also includes awareness of linguistic conventions about how to
express oneself to different audiences. These specially-marked ways of
speaking are called registers.
(Pages 27-29)
XXXII. Pragmatics also covers the study of discourse -- verbal or written
interactions longer than single utterances. Discourse processing often requires
an understanding of a situational setting or context. Discourse conventions
govern the way we understand and use connected language. (Page 29)
XXXIII. Metalinguistic capacity refers to our ability to analyze and reflect upon
our own language. Although saying and understanding sentences (part of
linguistic ability) is usually effortless, codifying the subconscious rules we use to
make and understand well-formed sentences (part of metalinguistic ability) is far
more difficult. Much of our knowledge of language is implicit, requiring
psycholinguists to devise special experimental techniques to answer such
metalinguistic questions as "How do I understand the meaning of a word?"
"How do I find the words when I want to talk about things?" or "Are some words
harder or easier for people to understand?" (Pages 29-31)
XXXIV. The languages of the world differ from each other greatly. One of the
tasks of psycholinguistics is to come up with universal principles that apply to all
languages, both in their use and in their acquisition. Linguists continue to
search for rules, parameters and options that might form part of a Universal
Grammar. Most research in this area has been carried out in the domain of
developmental psycholinguistics. Possible operating principles governing the
acquisition of language include the idea that children tend to listen to the ends
of words (accounting for the rapid acquisition of inflectional endings) and that
they avoid discontinuous elements, such as embedded clauses and the English
present progressive (accounting for the fact that these elements occur later in
language development, regardless of the language being learned.) (Pages 31-
32)
XXXV. In addition to the many spoken languages of the world, there are a
number of signed languages, that, like spoken languages, differ in their
phonology, syntax, and lexicon. Basic similarities exist in language processing,
whether a language is signed or spoken, including similarities in the types of
language impairment exhibited by brain damaged subjects. (Pages 32-33)
XXXVI The minimal unit of a written language system is called a grapheme.
Systems, such as English, whose graphemes represent phonemes, are called
alphabetic. Other systems include syllabaries (in which the graphemes
represent syllables) as well as systems that are not sound-based, such as those
that use logograms (symbols that represent whole words) or ideograms
(symbols that represent ideas). (Pages 33-34)
XXXVII. Philosophers and scientists have been intrigued by the processes of
language acquisition and production since the time of the ancient Greeks and
Egyptians. Wilhelm Wundt (1832-1920), considered by some as the founder of
modern psycholinguistics, developed early theories of speech production and
devised many basic experimental measures such as reaction time. The field of
psycholinguistics truly came into being during the early 1950s. Early
psycholinguistic theories were largely based upon behaviorist principles. Many
later theories were guided by Chomsky's Transformational Generative
Grammar. The field of psycholinguistics is still evolving. (Pages 34-38)
XXXVIII. The study of language acquisition by children is an active area of
psycholinguistic inquiry. Scholars are divided as to how much of language
learning can be accounted for by the role of the environment, and how much is
innate. (Pages 38-39)
MULTIPLE CHOICE QUESTIONS
1. The field of psycholinguistics is concerned primarily with
a. the ability to express and comprehend psychological problems
b. the processes of language comprehension, language production and
language acquisition.
c. the psychological, anatomical and physiological basis of linguistic ability
d. psychological problems underlying linguistic errors (Pages 3-4)
2. The smallest sound recognized by speakers in a given language is known as
a. a phoneme
b. a morpheme
c. a lexicon
d. an affix (Page 9)
3. Metalinguistics
a. is the study of the rules of word formation and interpretation
b. refers to our ability to analyze and think about language
c. is the study of the interrelationship between speech and psychological
processes
d. is a theory advanced by Skinner in the late 1950s, postulating that language
can be learned by stimulus and response.
(Page 29)
4. English is sometimes called an S-V-O language because
a. it is simple, variable and objective
b. its usual word order in sentences is subject, verb, object
c. its principal parts are subjects, verbs and objects
d. it has syntax, verbs and orthography (Page 16)
5. A written symbol that represents a word is called
a. an ideogram
b. a grapheme
c. a syllabary
d. a logogram (Page 34)
6. Transformational Generative (TG) grammar is
a. a grammatical description of the rules of English developed by linguist Noam
Chomsky
b. one of the indispensable characteristics of true language
c. the process by which children learn the rules of pluralization
d. the stage of language learning in which children begin to use the correct verb
forms (Page 20)
7. The smallest unit of meaning in a language is called a
a. phoneme
b. grapheme
c. morpheme
d. syntactic structure (Page 14)
8. A parent's statement, Your room is a mess, is best viewed as:
a. a deferential remark
b. a direct order
c. an ambiguous comment
d. an indirect order (Page 27)
9. The many pronunciation variants of a phoneme are called its:
a. morphemes
b. allophones
c. features
d. phonathons (Page 9)
10. When we say that language is species-specific, we mean that
a. different species of animals each have their own specific languages
b. only humans use a true language system
c. animals can only use language to convey meanings that are specific to their
own species.
d. all human beings use language (Page 6)
11. The word unties contains:
a. one free and two bound morphemes
b. two free morphemes
c. three allomorphs
d. three allophones (Pages 14-15)
12. A universal grammar is
a. a set of rules children are all taught in grammar school
b. a set of basic expressions which exist in all languages
c. a system of principles and rules that are elements of all true languages
d. a hypothetical model of language learning that explains how children
generate the grammatical rules of their language
(Pages 26-27)
13. Languages that do not rely heavily on word order to mark grammatical
relations in a sentence
a. are more complex than languages that use word order
b. are less structured than languages that use word order
c. usually mark grammatical relations with bound morphemes
d. are more apt to rely upon prosody to convey meaning (Page 17)
14. The sentence I can't find the shoes that the dog ate yesterday when we left
him in the car alone for three hours
a. is a coordinate sentence
b. violates the normal hierarchical structure of English sentences
c. shows how the principles of transformational grammar can be employed to
express novel ideas in an endlessly generative way
d. demonstrates the property of recursion in creating complex sentences (Page
20)
15. According the Chomsky's early theories, deep structures
a. are responsible for the complexity of surface structures
b. are the underlying meanings of utterances
c. are connected to surface structures by the application of phrase- structure
rules
d. are the innate rules we use to create well-formed utterances
(Page 21)
16. The mental lexicon is:
a. a system of rules for generating well-formed sentences
b. the neurological substrate underlying language use
c. a mental dictionary containing information regarding the meaning and
grammatically appropriate use of words
d. a system of rules for sequencing the sounds of a language
(Page 13)
17. The [p] in pot and the [p] in spot
a. differ from one another in voicing
b. are produced in identical ways
c. differ from one another because the first is aspirated, while the second is not
d. differ from one another because one contains a meaningful contrast while the
other does not (Page 9)
18. The premise that underlies Reaction Time studies in psycholinguistics is:
a. that the time required to process the task reflects is mental difficulty
b. that deep structures take longer to process
c. that transitional probabilities account for syntactic processing
d. that accessing the lexicon is the most time-consuming aspect of sentence
understanding (Page 36)
19. The Derivational Theory of Complexity says that
a. there is a direct relationship between the number of steps involved in a
linguistic derivation of a surface structure and the time it should take to
comprehend it
b. words in the lexicon are associated with various rules about their use
c. the complex parameters of a specific language can be derived using
experimental procedures
d. all of the above (Page 26)
20. Studies of the various signed languages in the world have shown
a. that they are distinctly less complex than oral languages
b. that they have many universal signs and symbols
c. that they are processed and produced using many of the same neurological
processes as oral languages
d. that they are more difficult to master than oral languages (Page 32)
21. Whether or not a sentence requires a stated subject is an example
a. of a paradigm
b. of a parameter
c. of a learning principle
d. of a language register (Page 29)
22. According to syntacticians, the constituents of a sentence
a. are its parts of speech
b. are units in a sentence that may be moved around
c. are the various meanings it is attempting to convey
d. make up various aspects of the sentence's d-structure (Page 18)
23. Some theorists argue that language must be innate because
a. children learn language even when nobody speaks to them
b. children learn language even though much of what they hear is degenerate
c. babies understand many words long before they can produce them
d. the desire to express emotions and communicate is universal
(Pages 38-39)
24. The words the, for, and is are considered
a. content words
b. bound morphemes
c. constituents
d. function words (Page 13)
25. Which of these sets of words is a minimal pair?
a. pit and bit
b. big and little
c. pots and spot
d. man and woman (Page 9)
26. If your friend says "I should of went right home" when he knows that it is
grammatically correct to say "I should have gone right home," this probably
demonstrates
a. a slip of the tongue
b. a lack of formal education
c. a breakdown in transformational rules
d. a difference between performance and competence (Page 20)
27. Which of these is not a sound-based writing system?
a. a system that uses ideograms
b. a system that uses a syllabary
c. a system that uses an alphabet
d. a system that uses graphemes (Page 34)
28. Early theories of psycholinguistics formulated in the 1950s were influenced
a. by behaviorism
b. by McCarthyism
c. by pragmatism
d. by abstract analysis (Page 36)
29. The difficulty of coming up with a grammatical rule, such as how to form tag
questions in English, even though we can easily create well-formed tag
questions, demonstrates
a. a disparity between competence and performance
b. the fact that much of our knowledge of language is implicit
c. the complexity of psycholinguistic processes
d. the probability that most language rules are innate (Page 31)
30. Primates have complex communication systems. However, they cannot
a. understand or produce human vocabulary
b. communicate about displaced concepts
c. express their immediate desires to their caretakers
d. distinguish between human language that is taught to them and their own,
primate communication systems (Page 6)
SHORT ANSWER QUESTIONS
31. Define phonology.
32. Define syntax.
33. Define pragmatics.
34. Define neurolinguistics
35. Distinguish between language and speech.
36. What are three major questions of historical concern in psycholinguistics?
37. Define the linguist's term universal.
38. Give an example of a function word and an example of a content word.
Explain the difference.
39. Give an example of a free morpheme, a bound morpheme and a
derivational morpheme
40. Briefly explain why the English phonological system makes it difficult to
program a computer to understand spoken language.
41. Briefly explain two reasons that nativists give for their claim that language is
basically innate.
42. Give one way in which researchers have been able to conclude that spoken
and gestural languages are similar in the way they are processed in the brain
ESSAY QUESTIONS
43. List and elaborate four ways in which human language is uniquely different
from animal communication systems.
44. Discuss some of the weaknesses that characterized early behaviorist
accounts of language processing.
45. Describe and briefly explain the theory of Transformational Generative
Grammar.
46. Discuss the difference between linguistic and metalinguistic awareness.
47. Discuss the concept of universal grammar.
48. Describe and evaluate the Derivational Theory of Complexity.
49. Explain how pragmatics affects the way we modify our speech in various
situations. Give examples of the appropriate use of various language registers
when speaking to an equal, a child or a superior.
50. Discuss the concept of language parameters in the acquisition of a first
language. Give examples of possible parameters.
http://www.bsos.umd.edu/hesp/hesp300nbr/WKBKCHAP2.HTM
CHAPTER TWO:
THE BIOLOGICAL BASES OF HUMAN COMMUNICATIVE
BEHAVIOR
CHAPTER OUTLINE
INTRODUCTION
LANGUAGE AND THE BRAIN: A HISTORICAL PERSPECTIVE
Early Neurolinguistic Observations
Localization of Function (Nineteenth & Twentieth Century Neurology)
FUNCTIONAL NEUROANATOMY AND NEUROPATHOLOGY
Neuroanatomical Structures Involved in Speech and Language
How Speech is Controlled by the Brain
Neural Cells and Their Connections: the Ultimate Basis of All Behavior
What Can Go Wrong With the Brain: Neuropathology
Examining the Consequences of Cortical Damage
LATERALIZATION OF FUNCTION
Putting Half the Brain to Sleep: the Wada Test
Splitting Apart the Hemispheres: Commissurotomy
Taking out Half the Brain: Hemispherectomy
Listening with Both Ears: the Dichotic Listening Technique
What Functions Reside in the Nondominant Hemisphere?
When Sign Language Users Become Aphasic
INTRAHEMISPHERIC LOCALIZATION OF FUNCTION
Measuring Electrical Activity in the Brain
Measuring Blood Flow in The Brain
The Role of Subcortical Structures in Speech and Language
WAYS OF VIEWING THE RELATIONSHIP BETWEEN BRAIN AND
LANGUAGE
Linguistic Aphasiology
KEY CONCEPTSI. The field of neurolinguistics is primarily concerned with the
role that anatomical and physiological structures play in the production and
comprehension of speech and language. Neurolinguists are particularly
interested in exploring where language functions reside within the brain, and
how the brain processes and produces language. (Page 52)
II. The relationship between language and brain function has been studied since
at least 3000 BC. Insights into this relationship have historically grown out of
studies of people with head injuries and strokes. (Page 52-53)
III. By the eighteenth century, almost all known language and speech disorders
had already been described. Sixteenth century medical scholar Johann Schenk
Von Grafenberg (1530-1598) was the first to point out that language
disturbances due to brain injury were not the result of paralysis of the tongue
(dysarthria). A contemporary scholar, G. Mercuriale described a patient with
alexia -- he could write, but not read. Other scholars described patients with
jargon aphasia, jargon agraphia and bilingual aphasia. (Page 53)
IV. The first scientist to theorize that language abilities might be located in a
particular part of the brain was neuroanatomist Franz Josef Gall (1758-1828).
Gall was also the first to point out the difference between white and gray matter.
His belief in the localization of various functions within the brain led him to found
the school of cranioscopy, otherwise known as phrenology. (Page 54)
V. During the nineteenth century, Pierre Paul Broca (1824-1880) discovered
that articulate language is typically located in the left third frontal convolution in
the left hemisphere. This area is known as Broca's area. Patients with damage
to Broca's area typically show symptoms of Broca's aphasia. Broca's aphasics
have labored, ungrammatical speech and exhibit severe word retrieval
problems.
(Pages 54-55)
VI. Broca also discovered that lateralization of language is loosely connected to
handedness, relating both to the precocious development of the left
hemisphere. He also commented upon the plasticity of the young brain in
response to trauma, asserting that young children with damage to Broca's area
may learn to talk.
(Page 56)
VII. More recent research into the response of young brains to trauma has
shown that they are indeed, flexible. Lenneberg (1967) posited that there is a
critical period for language acquisition during which language learning occurs
rapidly and brain damage produces no lasting communicative disorder. Further
support for the idea of a critical period for language learning comes from studies
of extremely neglected children such as Genie, a child who was provided no
verbal interaction between the ages of 2 and 13 ½ , and was subsequently
unable to learn fluent, expressive speech. (Pages 56-57)
VIII. Carl Wernicke (1848-1904) discovered another area of the brain important
in language abilities. Wernicke was interested in an area contiguous to the
highest cortical area associated with hearing. Damage to this (Wernicke's) area
brings about Wernicke's aphasia. Wernicke's aphasics speak fluently and their
sentences appear to have discernible grammatical structure. What they say,
however, often makes little sense, and is often filled with nonsense words
(neologisms). Wernicke's aphasics also have severe comprehension problems,
and (unlike Broca's aphasics) often are not aware that they are ill. (Pages 57-
59)
IX. Wernicke, working with neurologist Ludwig Lichtheim, produced a
classification of observed aphasias as well as those logically possible. The
Wernicke-Lichtheim model is based on neuroanatomical considerations and
predicts the communicative consequences of injury to various parts of the brain.
Although the model has had detractors, it has proven remarkably resilient,
despite being somewhat simplistic. Considered the "classical model" of
aphasias, it constitutes the first approximation of the final goal of localizing
language functions within the brain. (Page 59)
X. The brain, the uppermost portion of the Central Nervous System (CNS), is
housed within the cranium, protected by three layers of membranes
(meninges) and floating in cerebral spinal fluid. The most rostral structure is
the cerebral cortex. This is divided into two hemispheres connected by a
number of fiber tracts (commissures), the largest being the corpus callosum.
Although the hemispheres appear identical, they are not. The brain itself is
composed of alternating layers of white matter (nerve fibers) and grey matter
(nerve cells). Although it averages only about 3.5 pounds, it utilizes 1/5 of the
body's blood supply. (Pages 60-61)
XI. At the center of the brain is the diencephalon, a mass of neurons. This
structure serves as a way station for most incoming sensations, and provides
motor feedback to the cortex. Damage to the dorsal thalamus (one of its
components) can produce dysarthria as well as aphasia. Damage to the basal
ganglia, the next layer of grey matter, can result in hypokinesia (such as in
Parkinson's disease) or hyperkinesea (as in Huntington's chorea.) Damage
to the cerebellum, the next layer of grey matter, can produce dysarthria and
ataxia.
(Pages 62-63)
XII. The brain stem lies at the base of the brain. It consists of the midbrain,
pons, and medulla. The brain stem controls the functioning of the heart and
lungs. The remainder of the CNS consists of the spinal cord housed within the
vertebral column. The human spinal cord is nonautonomous. (Page 63)
XIII. Various elements of the peripheral nervous system are also important for
language function. The cranial nerves are important in controlling vision, smell,
hearing, and facial sensation. These nerves play an important role in
phonation.
(Pages 63-64)
XIV. Speech involves around 100 muscles. At a normal speech rate of about 14
sounds per second, this would mean 140,000 neuromuscular events per
second. Movement in primates (including humans) is controlled by at least three
distinct motor systems: one controls individual movements of the digits; the
second, independent movements of hands and arms; the third, posture and
bilateral trunk and limb movements. The motor control system of speech is
probably the first system. (Pages 64-65)
XV. The fine motor control system corresponds to the fibers of the pyramidal
tract. Prior to medically necessary brain surgery, neurosurgeons must locate
important areas of the brain via electrical stimulation. By doing this,
neurologists have been able to locate areas responsible for the function of
various body parts. A proportionally large area of the brain is devoted to the
control of the head and face. Fibers from this area travel downwards, making
contact with the cranial nerves, which are involved in various aspects of speech
production.
(Pages 64-65)
XVI. The brain is composed of neurons (nerve cells) and glia (glue cells).
Electrical impulses are transmitted from one neuron to another across a gap
(synapse) through chemical agents called neurotransmitters. Many things can
go wrong in such a complex system. Neuropathology examines the
consequences of brain damage and disease. These include:
A. Cerebrovascular disease
B. Trauma, tumors and hydrocephalus
C. Multiple sclerosis
D. Parkinsonism & Huntington's chorea
E. Myasthenia gravis (Pages 67-68)
XVII. Damage to various language areas of the brain can produce many
different types of aphasia in which different skills are lost or retained. Damage
to the third frontal convolution causes Broca's (expressive or nonfluent)
aphasia.(). Lesions in the motor strip can cause dysarthria. Wernicke's or
cortical sensory aphasia (also receptive or fluent aphasia) is produced by
damage to the posterior third of the first temporal gyrus (). Damage to the
angular gyrus can produce anomia. A disruption between Heschl's gyrus
(responsible for hearing) and Wernicke's area might produce subcortical
aphasia or pure word deafness: the inability to understand spoken language,
while retaining the ability to speak, read and write. (Pages 68-70)
XVIII. Other types of aphasia include subcortical motor aphasia, conduction
aphasia, paroxysmal aphasia, global aphasia, and mixed transcortical
aphasia, in which the patient cannot produce spontaneous speech but can
repeat what is said to her. Damage to some areas of the brain also may
produce dementia or agnosia, in which language abilities are spared, but
thought processes are disrupted. In some cases of global aphasia, although all
language skills are absent, ideation survives, arguing for the separability of
linguistic and cognitive competence. (Pages 70-73)
XIX. The left and right hemispheres of the brain differ in function. Although in
the normal brain both hemispheres are involved in language function,
bihemispheric involvement may not be necessary for reasonably good
functioning. (Page 73)
XX. The Wada test involves the injection of sodium amytol into the internal or
common carotid arteries, producing contralateral hemiplegia and
deactivating the ipsilateral hemisphere. Experiments using this test have
shown that most right handed individuals are left-lateralized for language. Many
left handers and ambidextrals have bilateral representation of language, as do
many people who suffered early left hemisphere damage. A very small number
of right handed people have right dominance for language. (Page 73-74)
XXI. Damage to the perisylvian language and speech region in children under
five years of age may result in a shift in the lateralization of language. Damage
after five years rarely produces a shift in lateralization. (Page 75)
XXII. Commissurotomy is an operation that destroys the corpus callosum and
thus disconnects the two hemispheres. Studies of "split-brain" subjects have
revealed that although usually only the dominant hemisphere can produce
verbal output, many language abilities reside in the nondominant hemisphere.
(Pages 75-77)
XXIII. Hemispherectomy is the removal of half the brain: a radical surgery
sometimes performed on patients with severe neuropathologies. In cases of
dominant hemispherectomy in adults, verbal output is very severely affected. If
the surgery is performed on a very young child (under the age of about five),
gradual recovery of language abilities appears to be almost complete.
(Pages 77-78)
XXIV. More recent studies have shown that removal of half the brain does take
its toll. Studies of children who are hemidecorticates show they have trouble
with various language tasks such as detecting syntactic anomalies. (Pages 78-
79)
XXV. One of the problems with studying brain damaged individuals in order to
determine the location of language abilities within the brain is that damage in
one area may have consequences for functioning in another. Neuroimaging
techniques have found metabolic abnormalities in otherwise healthy tissue
located at a distance from the lesion site. (Page 79)
XXVI. Dichotic listening is a technique developed to study the brains of
healthy individuals. Different stimuli are presented to the left and right ears of
the subject, who is then asked to report on what he heard. In tasks such as this,
the left hemisphere processes words, numbers and nonsense syllables more
quickly and accurately than the right hemisphere. The right hemisphere is more
accurate when dealing with music, human non-speech stimuli, and visual-
spatial processing tasks. (Pages 79-80)
XXVII. Other functions that may reside in the right hemisphere include the ability
to understand metaphorical and figurative language, as well as the ability to
remember sequences of events or draw a moral from a story. Other
paralinguistic functions, such as the ability to read facial expressions and
understand stress and intonation, also appear to inhabit the right hemisphere.
(Pages 80-82)
XXVIII. Some evidence, such as the fact that women tend to recover from
aphasia more completely than men, suggests that women have their language
abilities more diffusely organized within the brain than do men. These findings
are further supported by recent research using functioning magnetic
resonance imaging.
(Page 82 & 91)
XXIX. When sign language users suffer damage to language areas of the brain,
they become aphasic in many of the same ways as users of spoken language.
(Pages 82-83)
XXX. Techniques that attempt to locate functions precisely within the brain
include examining brain activity with an electroencephalogram (EEG). Event
related potentials (ERPs) have shown that the brain responds differently to
tasks involving syntactic and semantic processing. (Page 83)
XXXI. Measurements of regional cerebral blood flow (rCBF), a technique
pioneered by Broca in the late 1870s, shows which areas of the brain are active
when the subject is asked to perform such tasks as listening, speaking and
humming a song. A highly sophisticated method of measuring rFCB is a
scanning technique called positron emission tomography (PET) that provides
a three-dimensional representation of blood flow within the brain, and allows
monitoring of subcortical structures. Analysis of PET scans on subjects
performing various language tasks have shown that different areas of the brain
are used for different grammatical functions. (Page 86-89)
XXXII. Subcortical structures also operate in speech and language functions.
Damage to these structures can result in dysarthrias and semantic paraphasias.
(Page 90)
XXXIII. Cognitive neuropsychology is a blend of neuropsychology and
cognitive psychology. Cognitive neuropsychologists attempt to draw
conclusions about normal cognitive functioning by studying brain injured
individuals. The study of language within this approach is called linguistic
aphasiology. The basic tenet of this discipline is that the mind is composed of a
dissociable set of processing modules, which are held to be related to distinct
areas of the brain.
(Pages 92-93)
XXXIV. Linguistic aphasiologists are critical of the terminology of traditional
aphasic syndromes, citing their lack of specificity in analysis of language
dysfunctions, and the fact that patients do not neatly fall into any specific
category.
(Pages 93-94)
MULTIPLE CHOICE QUESTIONS
1. One of the difficulties of using brain damaged individuals to pinpoint which
area of the brain is responsible for a certain function is that
a. brain damaged individuals invariably have a atypical neurological structures
b. brain damage in one area may have consequences for brain functioning in
another
c. the vast majority of individuals with brain damage have lesions in more than
one area of the brain
d. individual brains differ widely in where specific functions are located
(Page 79)
2. The field of neurolinguistics is primarily concerned with
a. the relationship between brain damage and language comprehension
b. the anatomical and physiological bases of speech and language
c. the relationship between brain size and linguistic ability
d. the role of neurons in language production (Page 52)
3. The first scientist to show that language ability is located in a particular part of
the brain was
a. Franz Joseph Gall
b. Pierre Paul Broca
c. Johan Schenk Von Grafenberg
d. Carl Wernicke (Page 54)
4. The nineteenth century neuroanatomist who first pointed out the difference
between white and grey matter in the brain was
a. Franz Joseph Gall
b. Pierre Paul Broca
c. Peter Rommel
d. George Stubbs (Page 54)
5. A brain damaged individual who speaks fluently, using sentences with a
discernible structure, but whose speech makes little sense and is filled with
nonsense words is exhibiting signs of
a. Broca's aphasia
b. Wernicke's aphasia
c. Gall's aphasia
d. Geschwind's aphasia (Page 58-59)
6. The average human brain weighs about
a. 10 pounds
b. 5.5 pounds
c. 3.5 pounds
d. 1.5 pounds (Page 60)
7. For most right handed individuals, language function is lateralized within the
brain
a. in the corpus callosum
b. in the occipital lobe
c. in the left hemisphere
d. in the right hemisphere (Pages 74-75)
8. Damage to the cerebellum can cause
a. dysarthria
b. ataxia
c. aphasia
d. both a and b (Page 63)
9. A patient with a brain lesion that disrupts communication between Heschl's
gyrus, responsible for hearing, and Wernicke's area might
a. be able to read and write but not to speak
b. be able to speak and write but not to read and understand spoken language
c. be able to read, write, speak and hear but not be able to understand spoken
language
d. be able to read and understand spoken language, but not be able to write or
speak (Page 70)
10. The surgical process of disconnecting the left from the right hemisphere is
a. commissurotomy
b. lobotomy
c. hemispherectomy
d. brain sectioning (Page 75)
11. Linguistic aphasiologists use the term module to refer to
a. a processing element in the brain responsible for a particular ability
b. a neural structure which is responsible for a particular ability
c. a particular element of linguistic competence
d. none of the above
(Page 93)
12. Broca's area of the brain is
a. the left side of the corpus callosum
b. the posterior horn of the lateral ventricle
c. the left third frontal convolution in the left hemisphere
d. the posterior third of the first temporal gyrus (Page 55)
13. Transcortical aphasics are still be able to
a. repeat what is said to them
b. understand what is said to them
c. say their prayers
d. swear (Page 62)
14. Patients with right hemisphere damage often
a. exhibit signs of aphasia
b. have problems with phonology and syntax
c. have difficulty using and understanding metaphorical language
d. all of the above (Page 81-82)
15. As a consequence of left hemisphere damage, aphasia is
a. more common in men than in women
b. more common in women than in men
c. equally common in both sexes
d. easier to overcome in men (Pages 82 & 91)
16. When an aphasic individual substitutes an inappropriate word for the one he
intends to use, it is called a
a. semantic paraphasia
b. malapropism
c. dysarthria
d. spontaneous production error (Page 90)
17. If the dominant half of the brain is removed, almost complete recovery of
language ability is possible
a. if the telencephalon is left intact
b. if the surgery is performed on a young enough patient
c. if there was no prior damage to the nondominant hemisphere
d. if metalinguistic language abilities happen to be located in the nondominant
hemisphere in that individual (Pages 78-79)
18. The process of deactivating one hemisphere by injections of sodium amytol
(the Wada test)
a. is used to pinpoint language deficient areas of the brain
b. is used prior to hemispherectomy in order to determine which hemisphere
should be removed
c. is used on "split-brained" patients to localize language and speech functions
in the brain
d. is used prior to brain surgery in order to identify the dominant hemisphere
and minimize the possibility of damaging crucial areas of the brain (Pages 73-
74)
19. In a dichotic listening test, subjects are generally found to
a. process all stimuli more accurately when they are presented to the left ear
b. process all stimuli more accurately when they are presented to the right ear
c. process words, numbers and letters more accurately with the left ear, and
musical stimuli more accurately with the right ear
d. process words, numbers and letters more accurately with the right ear and
musical stimuli more accurately with the left ear
(Pages 79-80)
20. Sign language users with damage to language producing areas of the brain
a. exhibit disruptions of signing ability similar to the disruptions exhibited by oral
language users
b. preserve the ability to sign fluently
c. preserve spatial processing ability and thus most aspects of sign language
ability
d. preserve the ability to sign if and only if the right hemisphere is undamaged
(Page 82)
21. The Wada test clearly indicates that
a. most individuals have bilateral representation of language
b. bilateral representation of language is most common in left handers and
ambidextrals
c. only right handers with early brain damage are right hemisphere dominant for
language
d. only left handers are right hemisphere dominant for language.
(Pages 74-75)
22. A patient who neither initiates nor appears to comprehend his native
language and yet can repeat what is said to him and correct ungrammatical
utterances may
a. be a global aphasic
b. have pure word deafness
c. be a Wernicke's aphasia
d. have mixed transcortical aphasia (Pages 72-73)
23. The postulated "critical period" refers to
a. the period in human evolution during which language first came into being
b. a child's first few years, during which language must be learned if it is ever to
be mastered
c. the first year after a brain injury, during which the patient either recovers
language abilities or does not
d. the era in the study of psycholinguistics during which severely brain-injured
patients were the primary focus of study
(Page 57)
24. A PET scan
a. is a sophisticated measurement of regional cerebral blood flow
b. is a way of monitoring electrical activity in the brain
c. is a diagnostic technique for differentiating between aphasia and dementia
d. is a part of the Wada test (Page 87)
25. Subcortical structures
a. appear to play little or no part in language functions
b. are only involved in articulation
c. operate in both speech and language functions
d. play an important role in understanding metaphorical language
(Page 90)
26. At a normal speech rate, the simple act of talking requires
a. approximately 140 neuromuscular events per second
b. approximately 1,400 neuromuscular events per second
c. approximately 14,000 neuromuscular events per second
d. approximately 140,000 neuromuscular events per second
(Page 64)
27. With which of the following conditions is aphasia not a common
consequence
a. myasthenia gravis
b. cerebrovascular disease
c. Alzheimer's disease
d. head injury (Page 68)
28. The motor system that controls the muscles for speech is probably the
same one that
a. controls the movement of the fingers
b. controls the movement of the hands and arms
c. controls the movement of the legs
d. controls the movement of the upper body (Page 64)
29. Linguistic aphasiologists are critical of the terminology of traditional aphasic
syndromes because
a. they are not specific enough in their analysis of language dysfunctions
b. many components of the different syndromes are shared among the different
types of aphasia
c. the majority of patients cannot be neatly classified
d. all of the above (Page 93)
30. Recent studies have shown that practicing a linguistic task
a. increases brain activity and efficiency of response
b. decreases brain activity but increases efficiency of response
c. increases the speed but not the amount of brain activity while increasing the
efficiency of response
d. none of the above (Pages 89-90)
SHORT ANSWER QUESTIONS
31. What is the difference between aphasia and dysarthria? Define both.
32. What is the most massive commissure connecting the two hemispheres of
the brain? Describe briefly one of its functions
33. What is the motor strip and what does it do?
34. What are cranial nerves? What role do they play in language production?
35. What are the two types of cell in the human nervous system?
36. What is the Wada test and what does it do?
37. What does it mean when we say one hemisphere is "dominant?"
38. What is the difference between aphasia and dementia?
39. On the average, which is heavier, the right or the left hemisphere?
40. What did the Wernicke-Lichtheim model of observed aphasias purport to
show?
41. Define the term pure word deafness.
42. Give one reason why a commissurotomy might be performed
ESSAY QUESTIONS
43. Describe the difference between Broca's and Wernicke's aphasia. Give
some examples of the typical speech output of both patients.
44. On the basis of what you have read, do you believe that animals could be
taught to communicate in a human language? Why or why not?
45. Compare and contrast the results of left and right hemisphere damage on
human communication.
46. Describe and evaluate the contributions of Pierre Paul Broca to the study of
the neurological bases of communication.
47. Discuss how the study of cerebral blood flow can produce insight into how
language is processed in the brain. In addition to the experiments described in
the chapter, can you think of additional experiments you would like to perform
using this technique?
48. Discuss the evidence that there is a critical period for language learning.
How does the development of brain function and lateralization support the
critical period hypothesis?
49. Describe some of the ways in which researchers are able to localize various
functions in the brain. Discuss the short-comings and limitations of these
approaches.
50. Much of our information about the functioning of the brain comes from brain
damaged individuals. Explain why, and discuss some of the drawbacks of this
method. What contributions have healthy subjects made to our understanding of
brain function and language ability?
http://www.bsos.umd.edu/hesp/hesp300nbr/WKBKCHAP3.HTM
CHAPTER THREE:
SPEECH PERCEPTION
CHAPTER OUTLINE
INTRODUCTION
THE HISTORICAL ROOTS OF SPEECH PERCEPTION RESEARCH
MAJOR QUESTIONS IN SPEECH PERCEPTION
How Do We Identify and Label Phonetic Segments?
The Lack of Invariance Problem
How Is Speech Perceived under less than Ideal Conditions?
THE SPEECH SIGNAL
How Speech Is Produced
Place of Articulation
Manner of Production
Distinctive Features
Acoustic Properties of Speech Sounds
Acoustic Properties of Consonants
PERCEPTION OF PHONETIC SEGMENTS
The Role of Speech Synthesis in Perceptual Research
Ways in Which Speech Perception Is Tested
Perception of Vowels
Steady State Vs. Formant Transitions in Vowel Identification
Perception of Consonants
Phoneme Identity Is Context Dependent
Voice-onset-time: an Important Acoustic Cue
Categorical Perception of Voicing Contrast
Other Categorical Perception Studies
Categorical Perception: Specific to Speech Perception?
Other Applications of Test Paradigms Used in Categorical Perception Studies
SPEECH PERCEPTION BEYOND A SINGLE SEGMENT
the Perceptual Outcome of Coarticulation
Perceptual Effects of Speaking Rate
Lexical and Syntactic Factors in Word Perception
MODELS OF SPEECH PERCEPTION
the Motor Theory of Speech Perception
Analysis-by-synthesis
the Fuzzy Logical Model
Cohort Model
TRACE Model
SUMMARY
KEY CONCEPTSI. Understanding a spoken message is predicated upon the
ability to hear and differentiate the sounds that comprise the words of the
message. Although speech decoding occurs rapidly, it is a complex task that
relies upon a number of distinct processes and is complicated by the fact that
phonemes have varying acoustic characteristics depending on: 1) where they
are found within a word, 2) which phonemes they accompany, and 3) the
individual speaker. (Page 108)
II. Speech perception research has its roots in the communications and military
industries that emerged just prior to and during the Second World War. Much of
the pioneering work on speech analysis comes out of the development of
equipment for speech synthesis. The first device to decode and recreate
speech sounds was the vocoder. The principles used to design the vocoder
advanced the development of the sound spectrograph, an instrument that
analyzes and plots audio signals on a graph, giving a precise diagram of visual
speech known as a spectrogram. (Page 109)
III. The acoustical properties of human speech are very complex, containing
many kinds of information in any single moment. Understanding conversational
speech requires the ability to process between 25 and 30 phonetic segments
per second and to decode these segments into meaningful words. One of the
greatest challenges for speech perception research is determining how we
isolate and identify individual sounds in the complex speech signal. (Pages 110-
111)
IV. Phonemes in a language do not display invariant acoustic characteristics.
They change considerably depending on such context effects as
coarticulation, whether the sounds are being produced by a man a woman or
a child, and the fact that speech sounds are rarely pronounced the same way
twice. (Page 111)
V. The lack of invariance in the production of speech sounds makes
conversational speech so complex and diverse that at present no machine has
been created that is able to recognize and process speech the way that humans
can. Some speaker dependent machines have been able to process relatively
large vocabularies, while speaker independent machines can only process a
very limited vocabulary, such as numbers. (Page 112)
VI.Not only do speech sounds vary considerably, some speakers
underarticulate words to such an extent that the words lose much of their
identifying information. Other factors, such as lexical, syntactic, and contextual
information help listeners to understand such ambiguous speech signals.
(Pages 112-113)
VII. Three major systems are involved in speech production:
A. the vocal tract, which is the area from the larynx to the lips, including the
pharynx, the nasal cavity and the oral cavity.
B. The larynx, which contains the vocal folds and the glottis: the opening
between the vocals folds where they vibrate to produce phonation.
C. the subglottal system, which includes lungs, muscles needed for inhalation
and exhalation, and the trachea. (Page 113)
VIII. Speech sounds are divided into vowels and consonants. Consonants are
produced with more articulatory movement and more constriction than vowels.
(Page 114)
IX. The various places where the vocal tract is constricted to produce the
consonants are called places of articulation. Common places of articulation
for English consonants are bilabial, labiodental, interdental, alveolar, and
palatal.
(Pages 114-115)
X. The source of acoustic energy for speech sounds comes from modulation of
the air stream through the vocal tract. Some sounds are produced by opening
and closing the glottis, known as glottal pulsing. Voiced or phonated sounds
are made with periodic vibrations in the vocal folds. The rate at which glottal
pulsing occurs during sound generation is called the fundamental frequency.
The typical FO for men is about 125 pulses per second, for females it is about
200 pulses per second, and for children it is about 300 pulses per second.
(Page 116)
XI. A second type of sound source is turbulence when air is forced through a
narrow constriction in the oral cavity. This aperiodic sound source is the basis
for the production of fricatives and affricatives. (Page 116)
XII. Stopping the airflow completely and then abruptly releasing it produces oral
stop consonants. Other types of consonant speech sounds are liquids and
glides. (Pages 116-117)
XIII. Vowels are produced when air flow from the lungs is unobstructed. Each
vowel is produced with a different configuration of tongue and lip movements.
(Page 117)
XIV. Linguists describe speech sounds within the context of a system of
distinctive features. All sounds can be characterized by such features as their
place of articulation; the presence or absence of voicing; whether the air stream
exits the nose or the mouth; and whether or not the sound is made with
continuous air flow. (Page 117)
XV. The production of different vowels is determined by the resonant
characteristics of the oral cavity or vocal tract during the production of the
sound. The spectrum of the sound at the sound source (the glottis) includes
the FO and even multiples of the FO, called harmonics. (Page 118)
XVI. Bands of resonant frequency change in relation to the movement of
articulators during speech. These bands are called formants. Vowel formants
appear as broad horizontal bands on a sound spectrogram. Consonants appear
as columns on the sound spectrogram. (Page 119, 121)
XVII. Men, women and children have different absolute values for the formants
of given values, but listeners are able to process these sounds by using a
system of pattern recognition. This ability is called speaker normalization.
(Pages 119-121)
XVIII. Isolating the acoustic cues of the complex sound pattern requires
speech analysis machines (and machines able to synthesize speech) according
to precise specifications. In the 1950s, Cooper, Liberman and Delattre used the
Pattern Playback Speech Synthesizer to produce speech by playing back
formant patterns drawn on a sound spectrogram. The researchers found that
intelligible phonemes can be produced from highly simplified drawings.
Manipulations of the data fed into the machine allowed the researchers to
discover what acoustic cues are necessary for the identity of particular
phonemes. (Pages 123-124)
XIX. Many speech perception experiments focus on discrimination and
identification. Research on vowel perception has shown that listeners most
accurately identify isolated vowels when presented with the steady state of the
vowel sound. In natural speech, however, vowel identification (which occurs
between consonants) seems to rely most heavily on vowel duration and formant
transitions.
(Pages 124-126)
XX. In both laboratory settings and in conversational speech, vowels are
perceived more accurately than consonants, perhaps partly because vowel
sounds are of longer duration. Consonants, particularly stop consonants, tend
to be bound to vowels; the phonetic segment consisting of the consonant and
vowel is said to be encoded. Information about the vowel and the consonant is
transmitted simultaneously in what is referred to as parallel transmission.
(Page 127)
XXI. The difference between voiced and unvoiced cognate consonants in the
initial position appears to be highly dependent upon voice-onset-time (VOT).
The VOT for voiced consonants appears to range from just before the burst of
air is made to about 30 milliseconds afterwards. The VOT for unvoiced
consonants ranges from 40 to 100 milliseconds after the burst of air. (Pages
128-129)
XXII. Discrimination tasks using voiced and unvoiced initial stop consonants
present the listener with a continuum of sounds going from a voiced to an
unvoiced consonant and ask the listener to determine when the voiced
consonant becomes an unvoiced one. Listeners tend to hear many different
allophones of the same consonant and then, at a certain point, recognize the
consonant as different. This is known as categorical perception. Mid-range
stimuli that are sometimes perceived as voiced and sometimes as unvoiced are
called the cross-over stimulus. In many perceptual domains, discrimination is
better than identification, but the hallmark of categorical perception is that it is
not. Categorical perception appears to operate even when the stimulus is a non
speech sound.
(Pages 130-133)
XXIII. In categorical perception studies using monolingual speakers of English
and Thai, the perceived phonetic boundaries were greatly different. English
speakers heard the sounds of their language, Thai speakers of theirs. Studies
of bilingual speakers generally show that they have a single perceptual system
that is situated at the midpoint between their two languages. (Page 135)
XXIV. Studies have shown that many aphasic listeners have unstable
responses for several stimuli in the phonetic boundary area, implying that their
phonetic boundaries are not clearly set. (Page 136)
XXV. The acoustic characteristics of sounds alter as the speaking rate
increases. Changes from citation form are greater in vowels than in
consonants. All phonetic segments are shortened, but shortening vowels also
produces changes in formant frequencies. Listeners appear to expect these
changes: in experiments in which the target stimulus is placed in fast and then
slow carrier phrases, it may be identified differently. (Page 140)
XXVI. Perception of words in fluent speech is influenced by higher level
knowledge of semantics and syntax: top-down processing combines with
bottom-up processing (using only acoustic information) to allow listeners to
decode fluent speech. (Page 140)
XXVII. Listening for mispronunciation tasks have shown that people tend to
pay more attention to the initial part of the word than to its end. Sounds in a
word are recognized sequentially: the listener accesses a word candidate and
"fills in" the end of the word if it is missing or mispronounced. Phonemic
restoration also occurs when phonetic segments are replaced by non-speech
sounds.
(Page 140-142)
XXVIII The motor theory of speech perception posits that we perceive speech
in terms of how we produce speech sounds. This theory was developed to deal
with the absence of invariance between the acoustic signal and its phonemic
representation. Speech is held to be a special type of auditory stimulus for
humans. When we are exposed to it, we shift into a speech mode that enables
us to link articulatory gestures involved in the production of a sound to the
sound that we hear. Perceiving in the speech mode is held to be innate and
species specific.
(Pages 143-144)
XXIX The analysis-by-synthesis model of perception proposes that we
analyze speech by implicitly generating (synthesizing) speech from what we
have heard and then comparing this synthesized speech to what we have
heard. Little direct empirical evidence has been found to support this model.
(Pages 144-145)
XXX The fuzzy logical model assumes three operations in speech perception:
feature evaluation, integration and decision. Listeners are said to have
prototypes of words in their heads which must be matched to the auditory
stimulus. This model emphasizes a continuous rather than an all-or-nothing
approach to feature decision: the degree of match is evaluated on fuzzy truth
values. (Pages 145-146)
XXXI Cohort theory claims that in the first stage of word recognition the
acoustic-phonetic information at the beginning of a word activates a cohort of
possible words. In the second stage of analysis, all possible sources of
information, including higher level processes, help to eliminate words that are
not the target word. (Page 146)
XXXII TRACE theory is based on a system of highly interconnected processing
units called nodes. Each node has a resting level, a threshold level and an
activation level. Phoneme nodes may excite word nodes and word nodes may
excite phoneme nodes. (Page 146-147)
MULTIPLE CHOICE QUESTIONS
1. The phoneme /t/ differs from /k/ in:
a. voicing
b. place of articulation
c. manner of production
d. glottal pulsing (Page 116)
2. A sound spectrograph:
a. displays frequency, time and amplitude information
b. cannot analyze voice-onset-time
c. is a vocoder
d. produces synthetic speech (Page 109)
3. Which of the following does not contribute to the absence of invariance in the
speech signal?
a. coarticulation
b. allophonic variation
c. physical differences between male, female and child speakers
d. speech synthesis (Pages 111-112)
4. Which of the following structures is not part of the vocal tract?
a. lungs
b. palate
c. nasal cavity
d. tongue, teeth and lips (Page 113)
5. Distinctive features are used to:
a. describe allophonic variation
b. govern speech synthesis
c. determine the resonant properties of the vocal tract
d. describe the specific attributes of the speech sounds of a language
(Page 117)
6. Stop consonants are identified acoustically:
a. by adjacent vowel formant transitions
b. by voice-onset-time
c. by characteristics of the burst
d. all of the above (Page 122)
7. If a sound is perceived categorically, then
a. discrimination will be better than identification
b. perceptual discontinuity results from continuous changes in the physical
characteristics of the speech signal
c. it is normalized by the listener
d. it cannot be synthesized adequately (Pages 131-133)
8. Results based on listening for mispronunciation tasks suggest that:
a. we pay more attention to the beginnings of words than to the ends of words
b. we access possible lexical candidates only after we have heard all the
sounds in a word
c. context does not affect speech perception
d. top-down models are inadequate to account for speech perception (Page
142)
9. Which of these is not a common place of articulation for English consonants?
a. palatal
b. bilabial
c. labiodental
d. uvular (Pages 114-115)
10. The motor theory of speech perception posits that the speech mode
a. is innate and species-specific
b. is a special mode of perception allowing us to link articulatory gestures
involved in the production of a sound to sounds we hear
c. allows us to hear sounds phonetically rather than acoustically
d. all of the above (Pages 143-144)
11. Early research on speech perception made the discovery that
a. natural speech contains many redundant sounds
b. the ability to articulate a sound is necessary to perceiving it
c. humans are uniquely equipped to perceive and understand phonemic
information
d. coarticulation of consonants and vowels is necessary for fluent speech (Page
123)
12. Using the Pattern Playback machine, researchers in the 1950s discovered
a. that intelligible speech can be synthesized using highly simplified
spectrograms
b. that fluent speech has a highly regular spectrographic pattern
c. that vowel identification is possible even with a fairly simple speech
perception machine
d. creating synthetic speech requires a complex pattern of formant transitions
(Page 123)
13. The rate of glottal pulsing determines the fundamental frequency (FO) of an
utterance:
a. men typically have FOs of around 300 pulses per second, while women and
children have FOs of around 200
b. men typically have FOs of around 50 pulses per second, women of around
100 and children around 125
c. men typically have FOs of around 300 pulses per second, women of around
200 and children of around 125
d. men typically have FOs of around 125 pulses per second, women of around
200 and children of around 300
(Page 116)
14. Voice-onset-time is important in determining if
a. consonants are velar or palatal
b. consonants are perceived as voiced or not
c. harmonics are important in speech perception
d. the speaker is male or female (Pages 128-130)
15. If a sound is considered highly encoded, it means that:
a. its perception is unstable
b. it is not an example of parallel transmission of information
c. it is coarticulated
d. its identification is dependent upon information contained in neighboring
segments (Page 127)
16. Although men, women and children tend to have different fundamental
frequencies for specific speech sounds, listeners are able to understand all
three different types of speaker because of
a. voice synthesis
b. speaker normalization
c. formant transitions
d. categorical perception (Page 121)
17. Studies of categorical perception have found that
a. it is specific to speech perception
b. all people, no matter what their native language, are able to perceive the
difference between phonemes in most languages
c. bilinguals generally seem to have a single sound perception system
d. changes from citation form are more evident in vowels than in consonants
(Page 135)
18. When sounds are produced carefully in isolation, this is called their
a. citation form
b. singular form
c. isolated form
d. solitary form (Page 137)
19. Many phonemes that are perceived as the same are actually slightly
different allophones. The production of these slightly different sounds is often
the result of
a. coarticulation
b. categorical production
c. parallel processing
d. misinterpretation of acoustic cues (Page 111)
20. When psycholinguists discuss the "lack of invariance" problem, they mean
a. that distinctive phonemes in a language are not associated with standard
acoustic patterns
b. that speakers use different fundamental frequencies
c. that the pronunciation of distinctive sounds in normal speech fluctuates
d. all of the above (Page 111)
21. According to the fuzzy logical model of speech perception,
a. listeners understand words by matching them to prototypes of known words
b. listeners understand speech through the activation of a complex network of
perception nodes
c. acoustic cues generate a cohort of possible words which must be narrowed
down to the target word through logical deduction
d. listeners can rapidly process messily articulated speech by using top down
methods of perception (Page 145)
22. Which of these sounds is voiced?
a. the z in buzz
b. the s in bus
c. the f in fog
d. all of the above (Page 116)
23. Which of these words contains both a glide and a fricative?
a. yes
b. less
c. fun
d. wet (Page 116-117)
24. Research on vowel perception has shown that
a. vowels are easier to recognize than consonants
b. consonants are easier to recognize than vowels
c. perception of isolated vowels and those found in continuous speech differ
d. steady state vowels are harder to identify than those that are coarticulated
(Page 125)
25. The phenomenon of phonemic restoration suggests that
a. when we listen to a word, our expectations affect what we perceive
b. bottom-up processing is inadequate to account for word recognition
c. parallel processing is integral to both speech production and speech
recognition
d. the speech mode allows us to recognize the difference between speech
sounds and non-speech sounds (Page 141)
26. The analysis by synthesis model of speech perception posits that
a. speech perception is phonetic and different from auditory perception
b. listeners implicitly generate speech from what they have heard and compare
it with the auditory stimulus
c. listeners have ideal models of words in their minds which they compare to
what they have heard
d. listeners analyze speech by mentally rehearsing what they have heard (Page
144)
27. The place of articulation for the English consonants [t] and [d] is
a. interdental
b. velar
c. alveolar
d. labiodental (Page 115)
28. The cohort model of word recognition posits that
a. acoustic-phonetic information at the beginning of a word activates all words in
memory that resemble it
b. listeners have ideal model of words in their minds to which they compare
what they hear
c. acoustic-phonetic information is not sufficient to account for word recognition
d. words are grouped alphabetically in the mental lexicon
(Page 146)
29. Linguists describe speech sounds according to such things as whether or
not they are voiced, their place of articulation and whether or not they require
continuous air flow. These are called
a. distinguishing features
b. distinctive features
c. discriminant features
d. differentiating features (Page 117)
30. Sounds that differ in only one feature are called
a. cohorts
b. minimal pairs
c. cognates
d. contrasting pairs (Page 129)
SHORT ANSWER QUESTIONS
31. What do we call the portion of the speech production mechanism that
provides the air support for speech? What does this system comprise?
32. How do we usually classify speech sounds in terms of articulation?
33. What is (are) the place(s) of articulation for the sounds [b] and [p]?
34. What is (are) the place(s) of articulation for [k] and [g]?
35. What is a stop consonant? Give an example.
36. What is a fricative? Give an example.
37. How would you recognize a vowel on a sound spectrogram?
38. Define the term speaker normalization.
39. What is a bottom-up model of speech perception?
40. What is a top-down model of speech perception?
41. Define the term parallel transmission as it refers to speech recognition.
42. Listening for mispronunciation tasks have been used to examine the way we
pay attention to auditory stimuli. Give an example of a question investigators
might be able to answer with this kind of experiment.
ESSAY QUESTIONS
43. What is the invariance problem in speech perception? Describe the factors
that contribute to the absence of invariance.
44. Describe the three major systems for speech production.
45. Describe and give examples for the following test paradigms in speech
perception research: discrimination and identification.
46. What does it mean when we say that phonetic segments are not like beads
strung on a string? Explain.
47. Distinguish between top-down and bottom-up models of speech perception.
Give examples of how each model might explain word recognition.
48. Describe the phonemic restoration phenomenon. What does it suggest
about the nature of speech perception?
49. Describe, contrast, and evaluate two theories of speech perception. For
each, delineate what aspect of the theory seems problematic to you.
50. Much information about speech perception has come out of attempts to
create computers that can recognize and produce speech. Explain why it is so
difficult to program a computer to recognize human language, and what factors
make synthesized speech sound unnatural. What does this tell us about our
own ability to perform these tasks to effortlessly?