Professor Greg Francis 5/27/081SpeechIIE 269: Cognitive PsychologyGreg FrancisLecture 29Why do we say “razzle-dazzle” instead of“dazzle-razzle”?Language Many levels grammar phrases words All humans, who can, communicate throughspoken language how does language depend on speech? what are the units of speech?Illusions When you hear what I say, you think youhear at least separate words separate syllables But you do not words actually overlap in the speech signal it is nearly impossible to take a speech signaland cut it up into separate wordsIllusions The “blurriness” of speech explains some long-heldconfusions Oronyms (Mondegreens)The good candy came anyways. The good can decay many ways.Mike will row the boat ashore.It’s a doggy-dog world.Michael row the boat ashore.They hae slay the Earl of Murray, and Lady Mondegreen.They hae slay the Earl of Murray, and laid him on the green.Why the blur? The ear is a bottleneck analogous to the critical flicker frequency in theeye the ear can distinguish <clicks> as separate onlyif they are given at less than 20 hertz» 20 clicks per second above that, a series of clicks sounds like acontinuous buzzBut... Speech is seemingly perceived muchbetter Normal speech provides 10 to 15 distinctphonemes each second Fast speech is 20 to 30 phonemes persecond Artificially fast speech is 40 to 50phonemes per secondProfessor Greg Francis 5/27/082Phonemes pho·neme \'fo-,nem\ n[F phoneme, fr. Gk phonemat-, phonema speechsound, utterance, fr. phonein to sound](ca. 1916):a member of the set of the smallest units of speechthat serve to distinguish one utterance fromanother in a language or dialect, the \p\ of pat andthe \f\ of fat are two different phonemes in English>Phonemes Speech is made of phonemes Different combinations of phonemescorrespond to different syllables andwords We seemingly hear more phonemes thanthe ear can actually handle how?Packing If the ear can only distinguish up to 20 sounds persecond and we can interpret speech that seems to contain 50phonemes per second then the speaker must be combining many phonemestogether to overcome the limits of the ear The listener hears the 20 (or so) sounds in a second,but interprets them as more than 20 differentphonemesPacking If phonemes are being smashed togetherthere must be some blurriness and this can lead to misinterpretations This is also why there are few computers toread to the blind they do not know how to combine phonemes inthe right way“We don't need no education, we don't need no thoughtcontrol, no ducks or hazards in the classroom.” Pink FloydAnother Brick in the WallSpeech So what are phonemes? All speech is made of sounds sound is a pattern of pressure on the ear a tuning fork vibrates back and forth to make the sound of apure tone Frequency of vibration corresponds to pitch of the sound Speech consists of lots of patterns of this sort With many different overlapping frequenciesPhysiology Lungs pushair out tomake asound otherorgansshapesoundProfessor Greg Francis 5/27/083Example Note where your tongue is as you say bet butt beet bat The position of the tongue shapes the vocaltract and makes different sounds! this is true for all vowelsExample Note what your lips do as you say boot book The lips add additional frequencies to makedifferent sounds Thus, you can hear someone smile across atelephone! Vowels are all distinguished by the shape ofthe vocal tractConsonants Consonants are more complicated different type of control of air flow (1) Voicing: vibration of vocal cords /b/, /d/, /m/, /w/, /v/ (voiced) /p/, /t/, /f/ (not voiced, or unvoiced) (2) Place of articulation: /d/, /t/ (upper gum) /m/, /b/, /p/ (lips) /f/, /v/ (lip and teeth)Consonants (3) Manner of articulation /d/, /t/ (stop) /m/ (nasal) /f/, /v/ (fricative) Each consonant is uniquely identified by itsvoice (or not) and its place and manner ofarticulationFun Why do we say razzle-dazzle instead ofdazzle-razzle? for phrases like this, people always first say theword with a leading consonant that impedes air flowthe leastsuper-duperhelter-skelterharum-scarumhocus-pocuswilly-nillyroly-polyholy molyherky-jerkywalkie-talkienamby-pambywing-dingmumbo-jumboIt’s arule!Phonemes English uses 40 combinations of voicing, place, andmanner of articulation Polynesian uses 11 Khoisian (Bushman) uses 141 No language uses some possible sounds raspberries, scraping teeth, squawking,… Note, these sounds are used for communication, but not aspart of language! Japanese does not distinguish /r/ from /l/Professor Greg Francis 5/27/084Rules To say a word, we must combine phonemes In every language there are rules (trees) thatdescribe what phonemes can follow otherphonemes Thus, we can identify possible words fromimpossible words plast ptak vlas rtut thole hlad nypip dnomCompression Moving the tongue (and otherarticulators) around is difficult and takestimeto say sounds faster, people usecoarticulationshape tongue in advanced preparation forthe next phonemethis influences the sound of phonemesCoarticulation We generally do not notice theseadjustmentswe are tuned to recognize the new soundsas coarticulation This is the main reason computers havea hard time recognizing human speech!Coarticulation Notice that your tongue body is in differentpositions for the two /k/ sounds in Cape Cod Note too, that the /s/ becomes /sh/ in horseshoe And /n/ becomes /m/ in NPR You can enunciate these “correctly”, but incasual speech you do not!Coarticulation There are rules for how to coarticulate When a stop-consonant appears betweentwo vowels, you do not actually stop flapping slapped --> slapt patting --> padding writing --> wridingSpelling We have often observed that written languageis different from spoken language George Bernard Shaw (among others)complained about spelling in English he noted you could spell “fish” as “g-h-o-t-i” He offered a prize in his will for someone tocreate a good alternative to English spellinggh -- tough o -- women ti -- nationProfessor Greg Francis 5/27/085Spelling It is true that English spelling does not seem toagree with pronunciation a problem for learning how to read! Nor