BAA 42603

ILMU FONETIK DAN FONOLOGI

THEORITICAL AND EMPIRICAL ISSUES OF SPOKEN WORD

RECOGNITON IN PHONETIC

By :
Ahmad Zaid bin Rozedin (061466)

To :
Dr. Majdan bin Paharal Radzi
 Abstract
Phonetics refers to the properties of the speech at a detailed level, particularly below
the level of segmental phonemic distinctions. In order to recognize spoken words,
listeners have to extract information from the detailed acoustic signal in some way,
but theories differ about whether listeners extract phonemes, whole words, or other
units, by what mechanism, and they differ on what kinds of information are stored in
the lexicon. The process of spoken word recognition can be affected by any number
of situations such as the speaker or listener being a non-native of the language or
dialect, being a child, having a speech/hearing disability, hearing speech in noise, the
speech itself containing variability, or many other situations. Any of these situations
can shed light on theoretical questions by giving a fuller picture of how listeners
recognize words.
1.0 Introduction
In spoken languages, the information coming into the auditory system that has to be
recognized as words consists of tiny, fast changes in air pressure arranged in patterns that
change somewhat more slowly. For example, a lot of the noise that distinguishes an [s] from
an [f] is over 4000 Hz, meaning that it consists of many tiny changes of air pressure lasting
less than a quarter of a millisecond. If the first formant of an [æ] is at about 700 Hz in some
speaker’s voice, this means that a large part of the information about the vowel’s identity
consists of a change in air pressure that repeats every 1.4 milliseconds, added together with
various other waves, including the waves conveying the second and third formants, which
repeat even more quickly.
2.0 Issue
Spontaneous conversational speech among friends, illustrates some more issues
that complicate spoken word recognition: reduction or deletion of expected sounds
and assimilation among sounds. The “’cuz” at the beginning is realized as [ks] with
no intervening voicing, and this has to be recognized as a form of “because” or “cuz”
(if the latter is lexicalized). The sequence “I was just” is reduced to [ʌʒɨs], where [aɪ
wʌz dʒʌst] would be expected in careful speech, with loss of a syllable and with the
various fricatives and affricate assimilating into miscellaneous partially voiced noise.
The listener has to retrieve the three lexical items “I, was, just” from this string. The
entire stretch “you know what, I really don’t wanna” is realized as one long heavily
nasalized stretch, as shown by the nasal formant throughout, and a possible narrow
transcription (using spaces for word boundaries for clarity) is [jɪ̃ nõ w̃ʌ̃ ʌ̰̃ ɪ̃ ̰̃ ̃ ɹɪl̃ ɪ̃ dõ w̃ʌn
̃ ].
In this case most of the expected syllables are present, but the listener has to
activate and recognize the lexical entry “you” from [jɪ]̃ , “what” from [w̃ʌ]̃ , and so on.
While reduction is especially common and drastic in high frequency strings of
function words like “I was just like” and “I don’t wanna,” it does also happen in
content words.
3.0 Conclusion
The field has developed various theories and models to explain how listeners
recognize spoken words.
Reference source :
Immediate effects of anticipatory coarticulation in spoken-word recognition,
Journal of Memory and LanguageFebruary 2014, Anne Pier SalverdaDave
KleinschmidtMichael K. Tanenhaus

Chapter 8: Spoken Word Recognition , Handbook of Psycholinguistics (Second

Edition)2006 Delphine Dahan, James S. Magnuson

Individual differences in online spoken word recognition: Implications for SLI,

Cognitive PsychologyFebruary 2010, Bob McMurrayVicki M. SamelsonJ. Bruce Tomblin