An Investigation of Locus Equations as a Source of Relational Invariance in Speech

点击翻译按钮获取中文摘要

ABSTRACT The experimental and theoretical pursuit of invariance in speech has involved many levels of linguistic abstraction. The objective of the research is to investigate the "locus-equation" algorithm as a possible source of relational invariance for place of articulation in stops. Locus-equations- regression fits to a set of coordinates defined by the frequency of (i) the onset of CV transition, and (ii) the vowel target- were shown, in preliminary work, to be characterized by distinctive slopes differentiating the stop place dimension independently of the vowel. Continuation of this work cross-linguistically, and across a diverse subject population is planned. Corroboration of preliminary findings would strongly imply the availability of a higher order level of abstraction that could effectively code relational invariance for stop place categorization. Three- dimensional graphic projections of formant transition onset and offset points, in combination with statistical linear discriminant function analyses, will test the notion of "sufficient perceptual contrast" as an organizational framework for phonemic categorization. The significance of this research is to further our understanding of phonemic-level decoding of speech, and ultimately, to better conceptualize how the brain might "spectrotopically" represent phonemic equivalence classes.