DOCSLIB.ORG

SALDA Helping Students to Say Specific Sounds

Total Page：16

File Type：pdf, Size：1020Kb

Download full-text PDF Read full-text
SALDA Helping Students to Say Specific Sounds Helping Students to Say Specific Sounds Producing speech sounds is an important step in a child’s development. Many children develop these skills at an expected rate and pattern for their age, however some children do not achieve these milestones and need additional support to accurately produce speech sounds. Keywords: speech sound disorders, speech sound production, articulation, phonology, therapy Parts of Speech When describing consonant sounds, there are three main properties. These properties are place, manner and voicing. • Place refers to where in the mouth the sound is produced. For example, /p/ and /b/ are made at the lips whereas /h/ is made in the throat. • Manner is how a sound is made. For example, /s/ and /z/ are long sounds (fricatives) but /t/ and /d/ are short fast sounds (plosives/stops). • Voicing refers to whether the vocal folds are vibrating during the production of a sound. It is often referred to as turning the voice “on” or “”off”. For example, /s/ and /z/ are produced with the same place and manner, but for /s/ the voice is off and in /z/ it is turned on. Helping Students with Speech Difficulties It is not expected that teachers should take the place of a speech pathologist, and students who have speech sound difficulties should be assessed by a speech pathologist prior to any intervention program. However, it is useful for educators to understand how speech sounds are produced to support students in their speech sound goals. Making /s/ and /z/ Sounds Prompt students to “keep the tiger in the cage”. Both /s/ and /z/ sounds are made by keeping the tongue inside/behind the teeth. Demonstrate by showing the student how your tongue (the tiger) is inside the teeth (cage) when you say /s/. Let students try using the mirror to check their tongue position. The /s/ and /z/ are ‘sister sounds’, made with the same tongue/mouth position, however the /s/ is ‘voice off’ and the /z/ is ‘voice on’. Teach the student to make /s/, and then tell them to say /z/ ‘make the tiger rattle the cage’. The /z/ sound is a vibration, ‘voice on’ sound. The student can feel the difference on their Adam’s apple and also through vibration on their tongue and teeth. Making ‘th’ Sounds Prompt students to “stick your tongue out!”. When producing both the voiced ‘th’ (as in that) and the unvoiced ‘th’ (as in think), the student needs to place their tongue lightly between their teeth. The salda.org.au PAGE 1 only difference is the ‘voice on’ versus ‘voice off’. A mirror is particularly helpful so the student can see their tongue sticking out between the teeth. Making /t/ and /d/ Sounds The /t/ sound is made by ‘tapping’ the tongue on the roof of the mouth right behind the top of the teeth. Teach /t/ as a fast ‘tapping’ sound. Demonstrate and let the student use a mirror to see the tongue tapping. The /d/ is made the same as /t/ except for it has ‘voice on’. Also remember both of these sounds are plosive sounds that must be said quickly. If you say slowly you distort the sound. The /d/ and /t/ are difficult for some students to differentiate, particularly when occurring in blends with other consonants. Making /k/ and /g/ Sounds These are both ‘back’ sounds made with the back of the tongue almost pulled back to the throat. /k/ and /g/ are also both plosive sounds that must be said quickly. Other strategies to encourage accurate production include laying on the ground, as this encourages the tongue to fall back and to gargle also as it encourages the tongue to travel back in the mouth. The /k/ is made with the ‘voice off’ and the /g/ is made with the ‘voice on’. Making the /r/ Sound The /r/ is made by having the tongue curl up with lips apart. The /r/ is a ‘lift’ sound where the tongue is lifted. A mirror is helpful for teaching this sound. For speech you can exaggerate the /r/ to /er/. To say /r/ for reading have the student start to say a word such as ‘run’ or ‘race’ slowly /rrrrun/ and then have them cut off at the /rrr/. The /r/ is a later-developing sound, and is difficult for many students. Making /p/ and /b/ Sounds The /p/ is a quick sound made by ‘popping’ the lips together just like ‘popcorn popping’. The student can also feel the air puff at each ‘pop’. Once again this is a plosive sound that must be said quickly. Demonstrate and use a mirror to help the student see how to make the /p/. The /b/ is the sister sound made with ‘voice on’. Both sounds are said ‘quickly’ with the lips and a puff of air. Making /n/, /m/ and /ng/ Sounds The /n/, /m/ and /ng/ sounds are all nasal sounds, meaning they are made through the nose. Students can feel the air coming out of their nose when they produce these sounds. To produce /n/ have the student place their tongue behind their front teeth (similar to the /d/ starting position) and to breathe out through their nose. To make the /m/ sound encourage students to seal their lips and to breathe out through their nose. If the student has difficulty, prompt them to make a ‘mmm’ sound as if eating something yummy! To produce the /ng/ sound, have the student place their tongue almost pulled back to the throat (similar to the starting point for /g/) and then breathing out through their nose. Making the /l/ Sound The /l/ is a ‘lift’ sound that is made by lifting the tongue up behind the teeth. Exaggerate and have the salda.org.au PAGE 2 student curl their tongue up, placing the tip behind the front teeth (in the /t/ position). Make sure they keep the tip of their tongue up behind/inside the teeth. Demonstrate and then have the student use a mirror to ‘see’ the position. Making /f/ and /v/ Sounds The /f/ and /v/ sounds are made by the top teeth resting on the bottom lip and blowing; this can be exaggerated when teaching the sounds. The /f/ sound is the voiceless sound and the /v/ sound is the voiced sister sound. Again, use a mirror so the student can see their top teeth on their bottom lip. Students can also feel a gentle blow using their hand. Younger children often have difficulty hearing the difference between /f/,/v/ and soft /th/ sounds. Help them to develop an ‘ear’ for the difference by having them look at the formation differences as they hear the sounds. Making the ‘ch’ and ‘j’ Sounds The sounds ‘ch’ and ‘j’ are affricate sounds which combine aspects of plosive and fricative sounds. For example, ‘ch’ can be seen as a combination of /t/ and ‘sh’. To teach ‘ch’, start in the /t/ position (tongue up touching the roof of the mouth right behind the front teeth), then ask the student to drop their jaw as they blow out (the dropping movement can be exaggerated when teaching). This can be taught as a ‘woodchopper’, where students raise the axe (tongue) and /ch/ ‘chop’ (drop quickly). If the student has difficulty producing /ch/, practise saying ‘nch’ blend words such as lunch, pinch or ranch as the tongue is already raised for the /n/ sound. The /j/ is the ‘voice on’ sister sound for /ch/. Making the /sh/ Sound This is the ‘quiet’ /sh/ sound. The student must keep their teeth together and lips rounded as they blow the air out. Demonstrate and use a mirror. The standard ‘sshh’ gesture can help, as long as the student is still able to see your mouth. Making the /h/ Sound The /h/ sound is produced in the throat. Have the student feel the ‘hot’ puff of air on their hand. The /h/ sound is a voice-off sound, students will not be able to feel vibrations when producing the /h/ sound. salda.org.au PAGE 3 Want to learn more? To learn more about Language Disorder and how to support children and young people for whom language is their primary disorder, please contact Speech and Language Development Australia (SALDA). SALDA provides holistic, innovative and effective therapy, education and support services and has a transdisciplinary team of speech pathologists, occupational therapists, educators, psychologists and physiotherapists. Contact: 1300 881 763 or [email protected] Website: www.salda.org.au Facebook: www.facebook.com/SALDAustralia Megan to check References Passy, J. (2010). Cued Articulation Consonants and Vowels. Camberwell, Victoria: ACER Press. Shipley, K.G. & McAFee, J.G. (2009). Assessment in Speech-Language Pathology: A Resource Manual (4th ed.). Clifton Park, NY: Delmar Cengage Learning. Williams, A.L., McLeod, S., McCauley, R.J. (2010). Interventions for Speech Sound Disorders in Children. Baltimore, Maryland: Brookes Publishing. Version 1.01 salda.org.au PAGE 4 .
Load more

Recommended publications
  • Part 1: Introduction to The
    PREVIEW OF THE IPA HANDBOOK Handbook of the International Phonetic Association: A guide to the use of the International Phonetic Alphabet PARTI Introduction to the IPA 1. What is the International Phonetic Alphabet? The aim of the International Phonetic Association is to promote the scientific study of phonetics and the various practical applications of that science. For both these it is necessary to have a consistent way of representing the sounds of language in written form. From its foundation in 1886 the Association has been concerned to develop a system of notation which would be convenient to use, but comprehensive enough to cope with the wide variety of sounds found in the languages of the world; and to encourage the use of thjs notation as widely as possible among those concerned with language. The system is generally known as the International Phonetic Alphabet. Both the Association and its Alphabet are widely referred to by the abbreviation IPA, but here 'IPA' will be used only for the Alphabet. The IPA is based on the Roman alphabet, which has the advantage of being widely familiar, but also includes letters and additional symbols from a variety of other sources. These additions are necessary because the variety of sounds in languages is much greater than the number of letters in the Roman alphabet. The use of sequences of phonetic symbols to represent speech is known as transcription. The IPA can be used for many different purposes. For instance, it can be used as a way to show pronunciation in a dictionary, to record a language in linguistic fieldwork, to form the basis of a writing system for a language, or to annotate acoustic and other displays in the analysis of speech.
    [Show full text]
  • Consonants Consonants Vs. Vowels Formant Frequencies Place Of
    The Acoustics of Speech Production: Source-Filter Theory of Speech Consonants Production Source Filter Speech Speech production can be divided into two independent parts •Sources of sound (i.e., signals) such as the larynx •Filters that modify the source (i.e., systems) such as the vocal tract Consonants Consonants Vs. Vowels All three sources are used • Frication Vowels Consonants • Aspiration • Voicing • Slow changes in • Rapid changes in articulators articulators Articulations change resonances of the vocal tract • Resonances of the vocal tract are called formants • Produced by with a • Produced by making • Moving the tongue, lips and jaw change the shape of the vocal tract relatively open vocal constrictions in the • Changing the shape of the vocal tract changes the formant frequencies tract vocal tract Consonants are created by coordinating changes in the sources with changes in the filter (i.e., formant frequencies) • Only the voicing • Coordination of all source is used three sources (frication, aspiration, voicing) Formant Frequencies Place of Articulation The First Formant (F1) • Affected by the size of Velar Alveolar the constriction • Cue for manner • Unrelated to place Bilabial The second and third formants (F2 and F3) • Affected by place of articulation /AdA/ 1 Place of Articulation Place of Articulation Bilabials (e.g., /b/, /p/, /m/) -- Low Frequencies • Lower F2 • Lower F3 Alveolars (e.g., /d/, /n/, /s/) -- High Frequencies • Higher F2 • Higher F3 Velars (e.g., /g/, /k/) -- Middle Frequencies • Higher F2 /AdA/ /AgA/ • Lower
    [Show full text]
  • Nasal Consonant the Basic Characteristic of a Nasal Consonant Is That the Air Escapes Through the Nose
    Nasal Consonant The basic characteristic of a nasal consonant is that the air escapes through the nose. For this to happen, the soft palate must be lowered; in the case of all the other consonants, and all vowels, the soft palate is raised and air cannot pass through the nose, in nasal consonants, hoever, the air does not pass through the mouth; it is prevented by a complete closure in the mouth at some point. /m/ and /n/ are simple , straightforward consonants with distributions like those of the plosives. There is in fact little to describe. However, /η/ is a different matter. It is a sound that gives considerable problems to foreign learners, and one that is so unusual in its phonological aspect that some people argue that it is not one of the phonemes of English at all. There are three phonemes in English which are represented by nasal consonants, /m/ , /n/ and /η/. In all nasal consonants the soft palate is lowered and at the same time the mouth passage blocked at some point, so that all the air pushed out of the nose. /m/ and /n/ All languages have consonants which are similar to / m/ and /n/ in English. Notice: 1- the soft palate is lowered for both /m/ and /n/. 2- for /m/ the mouth is blocked by closing the two lips, for /n/ by pressing the tip of the tongue against the alveolar ridge, and the sides of the tongue against the sides of the palate. 3- Both sounds are voice in English, as they are in other languages, and the voiced air passes out through the nose.
    [Show full text]
  • Acoustic Characteristics of Aymara Ejectives: a Pilot Study
    ACOUSTIC CHARACTERISTICS OF AYMARA EJECTIVES: A PILOT STUDY Hansang Park & Hyoju Kim Hongik University, Seoul National University [email protected], [email protected] ABSTRACT Comparison of velar ejectives in Hausa [18, 19, 22] and Navajo [36] showed significant cross- This study investigates acoustic characteristics of linguistic variation and some notable inter-speaker Aymara ejectives. Acoustic measurements of the differences [27]. It was found that the two languages Aymara ejectives were conducted in terms of the differ in the relative durations of the different parts durations of the release burst, the vowel, and the of the ejectives, such that Navajo stops are greater in intervening gap (VOT), the intensity and spectral the duration of the glottal closure than Hausa ones. centroid of the release burst, and H1-H2 of the initial In Hausa, the glottal closure is probably released part of the vowel. Results showed that ejectives vary very soon after the oral closure and it is followed by with place of articulation in the duration, intensity, a period of voiceless airflow. In Navajo, it is and centroid of the release burst but commonly have released into a creaky voice which continues from a lower H1-H2 irrespective of place of articulation. several periods into the beginning of the vowel. It was also found that the long glottal closure in Keywords: Aymara, ejective, VOT, release burst, Navajo could not be attributed to the overall speech H1-H2. rate, which was similar in both cases [27]. 1. INTRODUCTION 1.2. Aymara ejectives 1.1. Ejectives Ejectives occur in Aymara, which is one of the Ande an languages spoken by the Aymara people who live Ejectives are sounds which are produced with a around the Lake Titicaca region of southern Peru an glottalic egressive airstream mechanism [26].
    [Show full text]
  • Your Speaking Voice
    YOUR SPEAKING VOICE Tips for Adding Strength and WHERE LEADERS Authority to Your Voice ARE MADE YOUR SPEAKING VOICE TOASTMASTERS INTERNATIONAL P.O. Box 9052 • Mission Viejo, CA 92690 • USA Phone: 949-858-8255 • Fax: 949-858-1207 www.toastmasters.org/members © 2011 Toastmasters International. All rights reserved. Toastmasters International, the Toastmasters International logo, and all other Toastmasters International trademarks and copyrights are the sole property of Toastmasters International and may be used only with permission. WHERE LEADERS Rev. 6/2011 Item 199 ARE MADE CONTENTS The Medium of Your Message........................................................................... 3 How Your Voice Is Created .............................................................................. 4 Breath Produces Voice ............................................................................... 4 Production of Voice Quality.......................................................................... 4 What Kind of Voice Do You Have? ....................................................................... 5 Do You Whisper or Boom? ........................................................................... 5 Are You Monotonous or Melodious? ................................................................. 5 Is Your Voice a Rain Cloud or a Rainbow? ............................................................. 5 Do You Have Mumblitis? ............................................................................. 5 How Well Do You Articulate?........................................................................
    [Show full text]
  • Linguistic Voice Quality
    Linguistic voice quality Pat Keating UCLA Linguistics Department back Phonation Phonation: sound production in the larynx, usually by vocal fold vibration (voice, or voicing) How fast the folds vibrate determines front voice pitch; how they move determines voice quality These vary across speakers (people’s voices sound different) and within speakers (individuals can adjust vibration) 2 Ladefoged gif: http://www.linguistics.ucla.edu/faciliti/demos/vocalfolds/vocalfolds.htm Some examples by John Laver - 3 major phonation types Laver modal voice Laver breathy voice Laver creaky voice 3 Cassette with Laver 1980, The Phonetic Description of Voice Quality Phonation types and glottal opening How large is the glottal opening? back 2 vocal folds glottis (space between) front 4 http://pixgood.com/glottis-and-epiglottis.html Ladefoged’s glottal continuum IPA diacritics: a̤ a̰ On the breathy side of modal: lax, slack, or lenis On the creaky side of modal: tense, stiff, fortis, or pressed 5 Ladefoged (1971) Preliminaries to linguistic phonetics Phonation contrasts in languages of the world Many languages contrast phonations on vowels and/or consonants Common especially in SE Asia, the Americas, India 6 UCLA Linguistic Voice Quality project How do phonation types (on vowels) differ within and across languages? This talk: Cross-language comparison of vowel phonation acoustics: What is the overall phonetic space for vowel voice quality? Phonation in tone languages: How do pitch and phonation interact? 7 Our project: 10 languages from four language families Sino-Tibetan Hmong-Mien *Yi (Southern: Xinping & Jiangcheng) *Hmong (White Hmong) lax vs. tense modal vs breathy H-falling tone, crossed with L, M lexical tones creaky L tone, others modal *Bo (Shizong & Xingfucun) – like Yi *Black Miao (Shidong Kou) *Hani (Luchun) – like Yi modal vs breathy M tone, creaky L tone, pressed H tone *Mandarin (Beijing) – creaky tone3 Oto-Manguean Indo-European Mazatec (Jalapa de Diaz) *Gujarati (Standard Mumbai) breathy vs.
    [Show full text]
  • UCLA Working Papers in Phonetics
    UCLA Working Papers in Phonetics Title WPP, No. 107: Acoustic Study of Georgian Stop Consonants Permalink https://escholarship.org/uc/item/63t1324h Author Vicenik, Chad Publication Date 2008-09-30 eScholarship.org Powered by the California Digital Library University of California UCLA Working Papers in Phonetics, No. 107, pp.1-30 An Acoustic Study of Georgian Stop Consonants Chad Vicenik [email protected] Abstract This study investigates the acoustic properties of ejective, voiced and voiceless aspirated stops in Georgian, a Caucasian language, and seeks to answer two questions: (1) which acoustic features discriminate the three stop manners and (2) do Georgian stops undergo initial strengthening, and if so, is it syntagmatic or paradigmatic strengthening? Five female speakers were recorded reading words embedded into carrier phrases and stories. Acoustic measures include closure duration, voicing during the closure, voicing lag, relative burst intensity, spectral moment of bursts, phonation (H1-H2) and f0. Of these, voicing lag, voicing during the closure, mean burst frequency, H1-H2 and f0 could all be used to discriminate stop manner, but stop manners did not differ in closure duration or relative burst intensity. Georgian stops did show initial strengthening and showed only syntagmatic enhancement, not paradigmatic enhancement. Stops showed longer closure durations, longer voicing lags, less voicing during the closure and higher H1-H2 values in higherprosodicpositions. 1. Introduction Georgian, a Caucasian language spoken in Georgia, has three stop manners: voiceless aspirated, voiced and ejective (Shosted & Chikovani2006). Its stop inventory is given below in Table 1. This study examines the stop consonants of Georgian and will look at a number of acoustic measures in order to describe the similarities and differences between ejectives and the other stop manners present in the language.
    [Show full text]
  • Some Characteristics of Oral and Nasal Air Flow During Plosive
    Some Characteristics of Oral and Nasal Air Flow During Plosive Consonant Production FLOYD W. EMANUEL, PH.D. DONALD T. COUNIHAN, PH.D. Oklahoma City, Oklahoma There are little available data concerning the oral and nasal air flow rates that occur in plosive consonants. Isshiki and Ringel (11) reported mean measures of combined oral and nasal air volume expended in the production of normal plosives while Van Hattum and Worth (18) de- scribed the total oral air volume used by normal speakers in selected plosive consonants. Subtelny and associates (17) reported peak oral flow rates for a single plosive, /p/. Yanagihara and Hyde (24) describe the maximum nasal flow rate during production of bilabial plosives. These studies did not, however, report for a substantial number of normal- speaking subjects the peak oral and simultaneous nasal flow rates during plosives. Such data appear to be useful in understanding the aerody- namics of plosive production. The present investigation was concerned with the measurement of oral and nasal air flows that are associated with the utterance of plosive consonants by normal speakers. This study was undertaken not only because such information is basic to an understanding of normal speech, but also because it is relevant to an understanding of articulation dis- turbances that result from deficiencies in oral breath stream regulation. It was anticipated that data derived from normal speakers would pro- vide baseline information against which the performance of subjects with velar pathology might be compared. Method SuBrEcTs. Young normal adults, twenty-five male and twenty-five female, were selected as subjects from among volunteers locally availa- ble.
    [Show full text]
  • Voice] Joshua Ian Tauberer University of Pennsylvania, [email protected]
    View metadata, citation and similar papers at core.ac.uk brought to you by CORE provided by ScholarlyCommons@Penn University of Pennsylvania ScholarlyCommons Publicly Accessible Penn Dissertations Fall 12-22-2010 Learning [Voice] Joshua Ian Tauberer University of Pennsylvania, [email protected] Follow this and additional works at: http://repository.upenn.edu/edissertations Part of the First and Second Language Acquisition Commons Recommended Citation Tauberer, Joshua Ian, "Learning [Voice]" (2010). Publicly Accessible Penn Dissertations. 288. http://repository.upenn.edu/edissertations/288 Please see my home page, http://razor.occams.info, for the data files and scripts that make this reproducible research. This paper is posted at ScholarlyCommons. http://repository.upenn.edu/edissertations/288 For more information, please contact [email protected]. Learning [Voice] Abstract The v[ oice] distinction between homorganic stops and fricatives is made by a number of acoustic correlates including voicing, segment duration, and preceding vowel duration. The present work looks at [voice] from a number of multidimensional perspectives. This dissertation's focus is a corpus study of the phonetic realization of [voice] in two English-learning infants aged 1;1--3;5. While preceding vowel duration has been studied before in infants, the other correlates of post- vocalic voicing investigated here --- preceding F1, consonant duration, and closure voicing intensity --- had not been measured before in infant speech. The tudys makes empirical contributions regarding the development of the production of [voice] in infants, not just from a surface-level perspective but also with implications for the phonetics-phonology interface in the adult and developing linguistic systems.
    [Show full text]
  • The Phonetics of Voice1 Marc Garellek, University of California San Diego Chapter in the Routledge Handbook of Phonetics (W
    The phonetics of voice1 Marc Garellek, University of California San Diego Chapter in The Routledge Handbook of Phonetics (W. Katz and P. Assmann, editors) Revised 14th June 2018 1 Introduction This chapter focuses on the phonetics of the voice. The term ‘voice’ is used to mean many different things, with definitions varying both within and across researchers and disciplines. In terms of voice articulation, definitions can vary from the very narrow – how the vocal folds vibrate – to the very broad, where ‘voice’ is essentially synonymous with ‘speech’ – how the vocal folds and all other vocal tract articulators influence how we sound (Kreiman and Sidtis, 2011). In this chapter, I will use the term ‘voice’ to refer to sound produced by the vocal folds, including but not limited to vocal fold vibration. I have chosen to focus only on a narrow conception of the voice in order to constrain the discussion; as we will see, the phonetics of voice – even when it concerns only vocal fold articulation – is remarkably complex and of great relevance to phonetic and linguistic research. In contrast, I will use the term ‘voice quality’ to refer to the percept resulting from the voice: in other words, different vocal fold configurations have specific perceptual ramifications, which we will call changes in voice quality. The distinction between voice and voice quality adopted here is therefore analogous to that made between ‘fundamental frequency (f0)’ and ‘pitch’. Why should we be interested in the phonetics of the voice? Linguists are interested in how specific forms contribute to linguistic meaning; for spoken languages, phonetic and phonological research addresses this goal from the point of view of how sounds contribute to meaning.
    [Show full text]
  • Influence of Fundamental Frequency on Stop-Consonant Voicing Perception
    Influence of fundamental frequency on stop-consonant voicing perception: A case of learned covariation or auditory enhancement? Lori L. Holta) Department of Psychology and Center for the Neural Basis of Cognition, Carnegie Mellon University, 5000 Forbes Avenue, Pittsburgh, Pennsylvania 15213 Andrew J. Lotto Department of Psychology, Washington State University, P.O. Box 644820, Pullman, Washington 99164-4820 Keith R. Kluender Department of Psychology, University of Wisconsin—Madison, 1200 West Johnson Street, Madison, Wisconsin 53706 ͑Received 11 August 2000; accepted for publication 16 November 2000͒ For stimuli modeling stop consonants varying in the acoustic correlates of voice onset time ͑VOT͒, human listeners are more likely to perceive stimuli with lower f 0’s as voiced consonants—a pattern of perception that follows regularities in English speech production. The present study examines the basis of this observation. One hypothesis is that lower f 0’s enhance perception of voiced stops by virtue of perceptual interactions that arise from the operating characteristics of the auditory system. A second hypothesis is that this perceptual pattern develops as a result of experience with f 0-voicing covariation. In a test of these hypotheses, Japanese quail learned to respond to stimuli drawn from a series varying in VOT through training with one of three patterns of f 0-voicing covariation. Voicing and f 0 varied in the natural pattern ͑shorter VOT, lower f 0͒, in an inverse pattern ͑shorter VOT, higher f 0͒, or in a random pattern ͑no f 0-voicing covariation͒. Birds trained with stimuli that had no f 0-voicing covariation exhibited no effect of f 0 on response to novel stimuli varying in VOT.
    [Show full text]
  • Introductory Phonology
    9781405184120_1_pre.qxd 06/06/2008 09:47 AM Page iii Introductory Phonology Bruce Hayes A John Wiley & Sons, Ltd., Publication 9781405184120_4_C04.qxd 06/06/2008 09:50 AM Page 70 4 Features 4.1 Introduction to Features: Representations Feature theory is part of a general approach in cognitive science which hypo- thesizes formal representations of mental phenomena. A representation is an abstract formal object that characterizes the essential properties of a mental entity. To begin with an example, most readers of this book are familiar with the words and music of the song “Happy Birthday to You.” The question is: what is it that they know? Or, to put it very literally, what information is embodied in their neurons that distinguishes a knower of “Happy Birthday” from a hypothetical person who is identical in every other respect but does not know the song? Much of this knowledge must be abstract. People can recognize “Happy Birth- day” when it is sung in a novel key, or by an unfamiliar voice, or using a different tempo or form of musical expression. Somehow, they can ignore (or cope in some other way with) inessential traits and attend to the essential ones. The latter include the linguistic text, the (relative) pitch sequences of the notes, the relative note dura- tions, and the musical harmonies that (often tacitly) accompany the tune. Cognitive science posits that humans possess mental representations, that is, formal mental objects depicting the structure of things we know or do. A typical claim is that we are capable of singing “Happy Birthday” because we have (during childhood) internalized a mental representation, fairly abstract in character, that embodies the structure of this song.
    [Show full text]