Auditory-Acoustic Basis of Consonant Perception

摘要

Among the most interesting examples of the perception of complex sounds is that of the perception of constants. Here, sequences of changing spectra induce the perception of phonetic entities in a manner that requires an understanding of the role of spectral trajectories, brief silences, the growth and decay of loudness, as well as language learning. An extensive study of the entire set of the consonant sounds of English is designed to elucidate, the sensory and perceptual processes whereby the acoustic waveform of speech is transformed by a series of processes leading to the perception of consonants as phonetic elements. Included is a significant effort in preparing slides, video tapes, and/or films that will illustrate the theoretical structures, both static and dynamic, in three-dimensional displays in both black and white and color. The overall goal of this research program is to extend work now underway on vowels and diphthongs to include all of the phonetic elements of English. This is to provide a detailed account of the auditory-perceptual processes of phonetic perception by the human listener and, at the same time, provides a foundation for phonetically based automatic speech recognition which should be essentially independent of speaker and rate, with unlimited vocabulary in fluent speech.