Path: utzoo!utgpu!news-server.csri.toronto.edu!cs.utexas.edu!rice!uw-beaver!ssc-vax!bcsaic!rwojcik From: rwojcik@bcsaic.UUCP (Rick Wojcik) Newsgroups: comp.ai Subject: Re: Early Language Learning & Ancient Language Keywords: speaking vs. hearing Message-ID: <25546@bcsaic.UUCP> Date: 31 May 90 20:42:46 GMT References: <5513@netxcom.DHL.COM> <26613091.16461@maccs.dcss.mcmaster.ca> <1990May30.000350.20070@caen.engin.umich.edu> Organization: Boeing Computer Services AI Center, Seattle Lines: 78 Paul Steven Mccarthy (PM) writes: PM>...However, I think the heart of the problem PM>lies in learning to _hear_ subtle differences in foreign languages. As far PM>as speaking goes, we can train the muscles in the vocal tract to reproduce PM>the desired formations and a talented-teacher/dilligent-student pair can PM>succeed with the help of imitating examples. It is very difficult, and PM>especially so for deaf people who do not receive the immediate, direct PM>feedback that a hearing person does; but it can be done, and I do not PM>doubt that physical imitation plays an important role. Martin Taylor brought up a very nice point about the difference between *hearing* and the *categorical perception* of speech sounds. What we are really touching on here is the theory of the psychological phoneme, which was first developed by Jan Baudouin de Courtenay in the late 19th century. It is still fashionable among linguists to say that speakers of a given language don't 'hear' allophonic distinctions, but the fact is that they hear everything. They just don't use the perceived differences to categorize speech phonemically (where phonemes may be taken essentially as minimal phonic segments used to distinguish words in memory). The best known article on the subject is Edward Sapir's 1933 "The Psychological Reality of Phonemes." Chomsky and Halle, despite claims to the contrary, never resurrected the old view of the phoneme. The only modern theory that currently recognizes it is David Stampe's theory of Natural Phonology (cf. Donegan and Stampe "The Study of Natural Phonology" in D. Dinnsen, ed. Current Approaches to Phonological Theory" Indiana U. Press 1979). The Moscow School of Phonology (cf. M.V. Panov. 1979. Sovremennyi russkii iazyk. Fonetika. Moscow: Vysshaia SHkola) has a similar, but allegedly 'nonpsychological,' approach to phonological representations. Your point about pronunciation through imitation is particularly important. Perhaps the major function of the phonological system is its role in muscular coordination during speech. It is what allows speakers to speed up and slow down their articulation (via deletions, insertions, assimilations, etc., of sounds grouped into rhythmic prosodic units). The phonemic representation of a word remains constant, while the pronunciation may vary in a bewildering variety of ways. Phonology plays several roles in perception. It makes variant pronunciations fairly predictable to listeners. But it also emphasizes perceptual saliency in emphatic speech ("Stee-rike!" for 'strike' and "nah-yun" for 'nine'). Speech recognition/understanding systems currently tend to treat phonological variation as 'noise' in the signal, and there have so far been only a few serious attempts to address it in the computational literature. You should, however, distinguish nonlinguistic from linguistic 'imitation.' Adult speakers can articulate any speech sound produced in any human language. The problem is that they can't use those sounds in talking, because that activity requires precise movements in the speech tract that are governed by a 'phonological system.' Physically, anyone with a normal mouth can trill [r]. Try getting them to do it while pronouncing foreign words--well, the brain just doesn't let it happen so easily. Spanish speakers make the initial sound in 'the'--a voiced interdental fricative--every time they try to pronounce a [d] that occurs between vowels. But they can't pronounce it easily when they are trying to pronounce the English word 'the' because the initial sound is not a [d] between vowels. Similarly, Americans have trouble pronouncing the flapped Spanish [r] in 'pero' ('but'). Nevertheless, they make an almost identical sound when they pronounce the [d] between vowels in 'reading.' PM>On the converse, I have also heard that some spanish-speaking peoples in PM>Latin America swear that there is a distinction between their pronunciation PM>of "b" and "v" -- despite the fact that voice-prints show no such PM>difference! Actually, one of my Spanish teachers (a graduate student) at Columbia insisted on this, and she was from Gibraltar, of all places. Of course, there is no truth to this impression, which seems to be based solely on spelling. I had a very amusing time in one class, where the teacher, who was Cuban, consistently confused dental and alveolar nasals (the final sounds in "bin" and "bing"). These sounds vary freely at the ends of syllables and are phonologically indistinct in Cuban Spanish. One American student, in frustration, finally demanded to know whether she was saying "naranja" or "nara[ng]ja" for 'orange.' She thought he was being perverse because she couldn't hear the difference in either pronunciation. They never did straighten out the problem, but it served to point up why an education in linguistics ought to be mandatory for all language teachers. -- Rick Wojcik csnet: rwojcik@atc.boeing.com uucp: uw-beaver!bcsaic!rwojcik