I have written
below in a casual and, perhaps, bloggish style. I thought some
spontaneous commentary was better than no commentary at all about how
these
papers relate to each other.
There are 8 sections below -- each with 2 or more
readings. First in Section
(1), I review the
assumptions
of segmental transcription and formal linguistics. Section (2) addresses the empirical
clash between the segmental
letter-based
model of speech, and the actual acoustic patterns
for speech. They cannot be made to fit very well most of the
time.
Segments do not begin to explain how the information is distributed in
the acoustic record of the utterance. (Linguists have been making
excuses for this for most of the last century.) Then
in (3)
some info suggesting that there is no limit to the variation to
be observed in speech. So there is no possibility of a single
`Grammar' describing some whole dialect. Next, in (4) some powerful data on
recognition memory for speech is presented. These experiments
suggest that people automatically remember the voices that spoke
specific words. So our memory cannot be abstract and linguistic
only. It is concrete and rich in all the kinds of detail we
used to think was somehow stripped away! Speech variation has no
limit whatever. It is for all
practical purposes infinite. Next (5) addresses what kind of medium
provides
the code for words either for perception or for speech
production. Then (6)
looks at the representation in short-term memory for linguistic
material. (Seems to be mostly articulatory.) Then,
in (7) we turn to the
question of why
we have our strong intuitions
about the segmental structure of speech. The answer should be
obvious:
it is a result
of our education beginning in infancy to become
skilled at reading and writing language with an alphabet. If this
is really the source of out segmental intuitions, then, of course,
illiterates should not share our intuitions about the segmental
structure of speech. In (8) it
is shown that this prediction is strongly supported by the data.
This result is that we have all
been misled by the consequences of our lifelong training. Well,
... it was surprising to me. Now that I have worked through my
story in various ways, I encourage readers to browse their way through
these materials and read the papers here in whatever order you
like.
Good luck,
Bob Port
Back to Supporting Materials Page.