PYI: The Acquisition of Speech

这项总统青年研究者奖将使研究者能够从事一个关于语言产生和感知的综合研究项目，包括这些能力在儿童习得母语中的发展。研究者开发了一种在该领域极具影响力的语言产生模型。他指出了这个模型的一些缺点，特别是在讲话时间的问题上。他现在正在探索一系列新的算法，这些算法有望更好地处理时间问题，并且似乎与语音感知现象有趣地相关。在随后的资助期内，他将深入研究这一理论发展，特别是关于工作间现象的建模问题。研究计划还包括对语音习得问题进行进一步的理论和实证研究。有一个基本的习得问题与婴儿如何能够基于儿童接收到的作为模型的声学数据来学习执行语言的复杂运动活动有关。研究者提出了一个假设，即语言习得是基于咿呀学语期间声道内部模型的发展，并将探索其含义，包括对协同发音的感知相关的含义。该假说对各种语音的习得顺序做出了一定的预测，另一个研究方向是检验这些预测的实证有效性。

This Presidential Young Investigator award will enable the investigator to pursue an integrated program of research on the production and perception of speech, including the development of these capacities in children acquiring their native language. The investigator has developed a model of speech production which has become extremely influential in the field. He has identified a number of shortcoming in the model, particularly with respect to questions of the timing of speech. He is now exploring a new family of algorithm which show promise for a better treatment of the timing issues, and which also appear to relate interestingly to phenomena of speech perception. During the ensuing grant period, he will pursue this theoretical development in depth, with particular reference to the problem of modeling inter-work phenomena. The research plans also include further theoretical and empirical work on the problem of speech acquisition. There is a fundamental question of acquisition related to the problem of how it is an infant can learn to perform the complex motor activities of speech based on the acoustic data the child receives as a model. The investigator has developed a hypothesis that speech acquisition is based on the development of an internal model of the vocal tract during babbling, and will be exploring its implications, including implications for the perceptual correlates of coarticulation. The hypothesis makes certain predictions about the order of acquisition of various speech sounds, and another research direction is to test the empirical validity of these predictions.