Understanding the perception and recognition of spoken words: Effects of phonetics, phonological variation, and speech mode

理解口语单词的感知和识别：语音、音韵变化和言语模式的影响

• 批准号: 1226963
• 负责人: Meghan Sumner
• 金额: $ 39.98万
• 依托单位: Stanford University
• 依托单位国家: 美国
• 项目类别: Continuing Grant
• 财政年份: 2012
• 资助国家: 美国
• 起止时间: 2012-09-15 至 2018-02-28
• 项目状态: 已结题
• 来源: https://www.nsf.gov/awardsearch/showAward?AWD_ID=1226963&HistoricalAwards=false
• 关键词: Understanding; perception; recognition; spoken; words

Everyday, people face variation in language. Readers see words printed in different fonts and typefaces, typically static on a page. Listeners hear a speech signal that is riddled with variation. Words are pronounced at different speeds, with different emotions, by different speakers with various accents in different situations, streaming by listeners at a rate of about 5 to 7 syllables per second. No two utterances of a single word are identical, yet this variation typically goes unnoticed. Despite this variation, listeners quickly and adeptly understand these different pronunciations as one word and not another; this is remarkable, considering that many words sound the same. An issue central to linguistic theory is how listeners are able to take this variable speech string and understand it. Explanations of how listeners accomplish this task incorporate purely linguistic solutions to the problem. Dr. Sumner's research program takes a new approach, grounded by the real-world information conveyed by acoustic-phonetic values. From any window of speech, listeners encounter cues about sound patterns, but they also encounter cues about the social characteristics of a particular speech situation. The impetus behind this work is that advancement in understanding the perception and recognition of spoken words will come from examining the ways in which listeners use these ever-present cues together. Dr. Sumner will examine this question by examining the ways in which listeners respond to words that vary along different linguistic and social dimensions. She will use experimental methods that inform us about how a word pronunciation improves recognition to related words in the mental lexicon, and about how listeners categorize different sounds depending on the linguistic and social context in which they are uttered.This work investigates the claims that listeners rely on socially-informative acoustic values of nearby sounds and words when understanding speech, and that linguistic information is stored with social representations that influence speech perception at a level much lower than once thought. This work adds a new link between linguistic and social experience to theories of speech perception and should prompt the field to reconsider the role of acoustic patterns and their place in theory more broadly. Integrating linguistic and social information, this research may provide a path to improve interactive spoken language technologies.

每天，人们都面临着语言的变化。 读者会看到以不同字体和字体打印的单词，通常是静态的。 听众听到的语音信号充满了变化。 不同的说话者在不同的情况下用不同的口音以不同的速度、不同的情绪说出单词，听者以每秒5到7个音节的速度流动。 一个单词没有两个发音是完全相同的，但这种变化通常会被忽视。 尽管有这种变化，但听众很快就能熟练地将这些不同的发音理解为一个单词而不是另一个单词;考虑到许多单词听起来都是一样的，这是值得注意的。 语言学理论的一个核心问题是听众如何能够接受并理解这种可变的语音串，对听众如何完成这一任务的解释包含了对这个问题的纯语言学解决方案。 萨姆纳博士的研究项目采用了一种新的方法，以声学语音值传达的真实信息为基础。 从任何讲话窗口，听众都会遇到有关声音模式的线索，但他们也会遇到有关特定讲话情景的社会特征的线索。 这项工作背后的推动力是，理解口语的感知和识别的进步将来自于研究听众如何一起使用这些始终存在的线索。萨姆纳博士将通过研究听众对沿着不同语言和社会维度变化的单词的反应方式来研究这个问题。 她将使用实验方法告诉我们一个单词的发音如何提高对心理词典中相关单词的识别，以及听众如何根据发音的语言和社会背景对不同的声音进行分类。这项工作调查了听众在理解语音时依赖于附近声音和单词的社会信息声学值的说法，语言信息与社会表征一起存储，这些社会表征对言语感知的影响程度远低于人们曾经认为的。这项工作增加了一个新的语言和社会经验的言语感知理论之间的联系，并应促使该领域重新考虑的作用，声学模式和它们在理论中的位置更广泛。 结合语言和社会信息，本研究可能会提供一个路径，以改善互动口语技术。