Perceiving Speech and Perceiving Words

Psycholinguistic research into spoken language comprehension, and phonetic research into the processes of acoustic-phonetic analysis, are both, in principle, part of the same general domain of inquiry. Both disciplines are concerned with aspects of the process whereby human listeners map from sound onto meaning. This implies, therefore, a close dependence between them. In the past, however, there has been surprisingly little direct contact between the two disciplines. Research in phonetics as, for example, Nomeboom (1979) has documented tends to pay little attention to the wider functional context within which the processes of acoustic-phonetic analysrs presumably operate. Conversely, psycholinguists — even those workmg on spoken word-recognition tend to neglect, or simply ignore, the complexrties of the acoustic-phonetic input to the processes they are studymg. We can take for granted that psycholinguists should pay more attention to acoustic-phonetic issues. What is less straightforward is_th_e claim that phoneticians should pay more attention to psycholinguisnc issues. Nonethelcss, this is what I will try to establish here. I will do so With particular reference to the relationship between the acoustic-phonetic analysrs of the Speech signal and the perception and identification of spoken words. Two questions need to be examined here. First, how far does the study of Spoken word-recognition also raise important acoustic-phonetrc questions? Second, how far has research in acoustic-phonetics in fact prov1ded an adequate basis for an approach to these questions?