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

对言语不变性的实验和理论追求涉及语言抽象的多个层面。研究的目的是研究“轨迹方程”算法作为一种可能的关系不变性来源的发音地点在停止。轨迹方程-回归拟合一组坐标，由(i) CV过渡开始的频率和（ii）元音目标的频率定义-在初步工作中显示，其特征是不同的斜率，独立于元音区分停止位置维度。计划在跨语言和跨不同学科人群中继续开展这项工作。对初步研究结果的确证将强烈暗示更高层次抽象的可用性，这种抽象可以有效地为停车地点分类编码关系不变性。构象过渡起始点和偏移点的三维图形投影，结合统计线性判别函数分析，将测试“充分感知对比”作为音位分类的组织框架的概念。这项研究的意义在于进一步加深我们对语音音素水平解码的理解，并最终更好地概念化大脑如何“光谱”地表示音素对等类。

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.