Doctoral Dissertation Research: The perception of acoustic-phonetic cues and its impact on speech category learning

要理解语言，我们必须能够识别和区分我们语言中的声音。例如，当我们在Toe和Tall中听到第一个声音时，我们必须将它们识别为相同声音/t/的两个实例，它们与其他声音不同，例如‘doe’开头的/d/。这是一项了不起的壮举，因为每个语音都有一系列声学特性。因此，一个令语音感知研究人员感兴趣的问题是，听者如何决定关注哪些声学特性，以及忽略哪些声学特性。听众可能会纯粹根据经验来了解这一点。也就是说，基于接触到他们母语的语音，他们开始知道/t/vs/d/之间的差异是通过一组对对比最有信息的特定声学属性来表示的。听者也可以根据线索之间的关系来关注线索。例如，如果两个线索在感知上是密不可分的，那么关注一个就意味着必须关注另一个。本论文的研究可能会为如何改进第二语言教学提供见解，并可能为少数民族语言语音合成技术的研究提供参考。本课题的目标是了解听者的语言体验和声学特性之间的内在关系如何影响语音感知。通过感知实验，研究人员建议比较听者在对语音进行分类时如何使用两对声学特性。其中一对已经被证明在感觉上是不可分割的，另一对在感觉上是独立的。两组听者将被测试：对这两对属性中的任何一对都没有语言经验的英语听力者，以及对这两对属性都有语言经验的哈尼族(藏缅云南，中国)听众。操控经验以及配对之间的关系将使研究人员能够澄清经验的作用与知觉可分割性的作用。此外，作为拟议项目的一部分，一名本科生将接受语言田野调查和实验研究方法方面的培训。该奖项反映了NSF的法定使命，并通过使用基金会的智力优势和更广泛的影响审查标准进行评估，被认为值得支持。

To understand speech, we must be able to recognize and distinguish the sounds in our language. For example, when we hear the first sound in 'toe' and in 'tall', we must identify them as two instances of the same sound, /t/, that are distinct from other sounds such as /d/ at the beginning of 'doe'. This is a remarkable feat given that each speech sound is characterized by a host of acoustic properties. Thus, one question that has interested researchers in speech perception is how listeners decide what acoustic properties to pay attention to and what acoustic properties to ignore. Listeners may learn this purely based on experience. That is, based on exposure to the speech sounds in their native language, they come to know that the difference between /t/ vs /d/ is signaled by a specific set of acoustic properties that are most informative to the contrast. Listeners may also attend to cues based on the relationship the cues have with each other. For example, if two cues are perceptually inseparable, then attending to one means necessarily attending to the other.This dissertation research may lead to insights in how to improve second language instruction and may inform work for technologies on speech synthesis in minority languages.The goal of this project is to understand how listener's language experience and the inherent relation between acoustic properties affect speech perception. With perception experiments the researchers propose to compare how listeners use two pairs of acoustic properties when categorizing speech sounds. One pair has been shown to be perceptually inseparable, and another pair is perceptually independent. Two groups of listeners will be tested: English listeners who have no language experience with either pair of properties, and Hani (Tibeto-Burman - Yunnan, China) listeners who have language experience with both pairs of properties. Manipulating experience as well as the relation between pairs will enable the researchers to disambiguate the role of experience from that of perceptual separability. Additionally, as part of the proposed project an undergraduate student will be trained in linguistic fieldwork and experimental research methods.This award reflects NSF's statutory mission and has been deemed worthy of support through evaluation using the Foundation's intellectual merit and broader impacts review criteria.