Path: utzoo!attcan!lsuc!maccs!cs4g6at
From: cs4g6at@maccs.dcss.mcmaster.ca (Shelley     CP)
Newsgroups: comp.ai
Subject: Re: Early Language Learning & Ancient Language
Keywords: speaking vs. hearing
Message-ID: <2666822A.25786@maccs.dcss.mcmaster.ca>
Date: 1 Jun 90 14:56:41 GMT
References: <5513@netxcom.DHL.COM> <26613091.16461@maccs.dcss.mcmaster.ca> <1990May30.000350.20070@caen.engin.umich.edu>
Organization: McMaster University, Hamilton, Ontario, Canada
Lines: 58

In article <1990May30.000350.20070@caen.engin.umich.edu> zarnuk@caen.engin.umich.edu (Paul Steven Mccarthy) writes:
>>(Shelley CP) writes:
>> [...people deaf from birth who learn to speak...]
>
>You bring up a good point here.  However, I think the heart of the problem
>lies in learning to _hear_ subtle differences in foreign languages.  As far
>as speaking goes, we can train the muscles in the vocal tract to reproduce
>the desired formations and a talented-teacher/dilligent-student pair can
>succeed with the help of imitating examples.  It is very difficult, and 
>especially so for deaf people who do not receive the immediate, direct
>feedback that a hearing person does; but it can be done, and I do not
>doubt that physical imitation plays an important role.  
>
>It seems that learning to _hear_ subtle differences in another language
>suffers because there is no way to "watch-and-mimic" the process.  I don't
>think we can excercise the same intentional control over which "sub-nets"
>"recognize" a given sound pattern as we might conciously direct the
>muscles of the vocal tract.  In fact, I imagine the main difficulty arises
>from suspending the disbelief that there is a difference at all, much less
>reliably identifying it.  I think bio-feedback with printed traces of the
>voice-prints would probably speed the process.  (Any takers? :)  In a 
>similar vein, I have heard that Asiatics learn to distinguish quarter-tones,
>which westerners fail to identify.  
>
Actually, the same training process used for deaf people could (and has, I
believe) be applied to the non-deaf.  Deaf people are trained using voice
'spectrographs'.  A hearing person who is being trained to produce news
sound types must also simultaneously train himself to hear the distinction
in what he is producing.  All hearing speakers use this feedback circuit
during normal speech anyway, to correct any errors they make in their own
language.  Certainly, this kind of learning takes place at a very high
cognitive level and is therefore much slower, but this is precisely what
has brought homo sapiens to its present 'intelligent' condition.  This is
the quibble I would raise over the 'kittens raised in the dark' example
which came up earlier.  The whole thing is obviously difficult and subject
to individual variation, but not impossible, as some people have stated.
'Nuff said. :>

>On the converse, I have also heard that some spanish-speaking peoples in Latin
>America swear that there is a distinction between their pronunciation of 
>"b" and "v" -- despite the fact that voice-prints show no such difference!
>
Well, I would think then that perhaps the percieved difference exists (in
reality) at a higher level than just the phonetic.  The phonological 
context of the 'b' and 'v' may be different and just come out the same
in speech.  In this case, perception may have been abstracted away from
the actual stimulus.  Mind you, I don't know anything about spanish
phonology....

> 
>---Paul...   (you know, 'the impossible just takes a little longer'...)


-- 
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* Cameron Shelley   *    Return Path: cs4g6at@maccs.dcss.mcmaster.ca         *
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