Sensori-motor constraints and the organization of sound patterns - PowerPoint PPT Presentation

Sensori-motor constraints and the organization of sound patterns Lucie Ménard Laboratoire de phonétique Université du Québec à Montréal Center for Research on Language, Mind, and Brain Institut des sciences cognitives www.phonetique.uqam.ca

• Background  and: • Questions -Louis-Jean Boë (GIPSA, Grenoble) • Vowels • Trends -Jean-Luc Schwartz (GIPSA, Grenoble) • Sensori-motor • Consonants -Pierre Poirier (ISC, UQAM) • Trends -Collaborators from the Laboratoire de • Sensori-motor • Syllables phonétique (UQAM), in alphabetical order : • Trends Jérôme Aubin, Annie Brasseur, Serge Drouin, • Sensori-motor • Conclusion Caroline Émond, Marilyn Giroux, Annie Leclerc, Marilène C. Rousseau, Mélanie Thibeault, Corinne Toupin - the subjects…..

• Background  Sensori-motor constraints : related to the • Questions speaker’s production system and listener’s • Vowels • Trends perception system • Sensori-motor • Consonants • Trends Auditory cues • Sensori-motor • Syllables • Trends • Sensori-motor Visual cues • Conclusion  Languages usually do not use all possible sounds that can be produced and perceived by humans, but rather use sounds related to sensori-motor constraints

• Background  Understanding those physical constraints can shed • Questions light on : • Vowels • Trends • Sensori-motor • Consonants • Trends  Sound changes in diachrony • Sensori-motor • Syllables • Trends  Infant’s speech development • Sensori-motor • Conclusion

• Background  The issue of the role played by sensori-motor • Questions constraints in speech became more important with the • Vowels • Trends emergence of “embodied cognition” • Sensori-motor • Consonants • Trends  It has been claimed that the abstract • Sensori-motor • Syllables representations (=mental representations, for some • Trends researchers) should be the focus of linguistic studies • Sensori-motor • Conclusion  But since the brain interacts with the physical world (and sometimes develops with sensori-motor experience), representations and their implementation in the body are both related

• Background  The notion of “articulatory ease” or “naturalness” • Questions has been taken into account in generative grammar • Vowels • Trends (phonology) through the notion of “markedness” • Sensori-motor • Consonants • Trends  After SPE, an unmarked feature was one considered • Sensori-motor • Syllables more “natural” phonetically, generally favored in • Trends languages of the world • Sensori-motor • Conclusion  Other phonological models (feature geometry, natural phonology,...) have integrated mechanisms to take into account biomechanic links between features

• Background Two central questions: • Questions • Vowels • Trends  Could knowledge of the articulatory processes • Sensori-motor • Consonants involved in speech production and vocal tract • Trends anatomy explain sound patterns in languages of the • Sensori-motor • Syllables world and in speech development? • Trends • Sensori-motor • Conclusion  Could knowledge of auditory mechanisms involved in human speech perception explain sound patterns in languages of the world and in speech development?

• Background And related questions: • Questions • Vowels • Trends  Does the evolution of sound categories require the • Sensori-motor • Consonants evolution of abstract representations...? • Trends • Sensori-motor • Syllables  ...or could the evolution of sound categories result • Trends from the evolution of the vocal tract and perceptual • Sensori-motor • Conclusion system?  Could vocal tract constraints influence the nature of abstract representations of sound?

• Background • Questions • Vowels • Trends • Sensori-motor • Consonants • Trends • Sensori-motor • Syllables • Trends Vowels • Sensori-motor • Conclusion

• Background The UPSID database • Questions  UPSID (UCLA Phonological Segment Inventory • Vowels • Trends Database) surveys sound inventories of 317 • Sensori-motor • Consonants languages in the world (updated to more than 400). • Trends (Maddieson, 1984; Maddieson, 1991) • Sensori-motor • Syllables • Trends  Languages belong to the 20 families defined in • Sensori-motor • Conclusion the Stanford classification : Khoisan, Niger- Kordofanian, Nilo-Saharan, Afro-Asiatic, Dravidian, Burushaski, Caucasian, Indo-European, Basque, Ural-Altaic, Ainu, Paleo-Siberian, Eskimo-Aleut, Sino- Tibetan, Austro-Tai, Austro-Asiatic, Indo-Pacific, Australian, Northern and Southern Ameridian.

• Background The UPSID database • Questions  In this database, vowels and consonants are • Vowels • Trends represented by • Sensori-motor • Consonants i) their symbol (quality, identity) • Trends ii) their localization in a « system », • Sensori-motor • Syllables representing articulatory and acoustic • Trends dimensions • Sensori-motor • Conclusion Schwartz et al. (1997a, 236)

• Background Sound systems • Questions  This form corresponds to articulation and acoustics. • Vowels • Trends • Sensori-motor • Consonants • Trends Jaw lowered Nasal • Sensori-motor F1 (Hz) y • Syllables • Trends e o œ • Sensori-motor • Conclusion i u Tongue fronted a Lips rounded F2 (Hz)  The vocal tract offers more possibilities than Labial those used by languages Oral

• Background Number of vowels per language • Questions  Languages tend to reduce the number of vowels • Vowels • Trends in their inventories. • Sensori-motor • Consonants • Trends • Sensori-motor • Syllables • Trends • Sensori-motor • Conclusion Nber of lggs Nber of vowels per lgg Vallée (1994)

• Background Most frequent vowels • Questions  90% of languages have /i u a/ in their inventories • Vowels • Trends  The most frequent vowels are peripheral vowels, • Sensori-motor • Consonants high vowels and internal vowels • Trends • Sensori-motor • Syllables • Trends • Sensori-motor • Conclusion Vallée (1994)

• Background System organization • Questions  When the number of vowels is greater than 3, a • Vowels • Trends constraint of structural organization is respected. • Sensori-motor • Consonants • Trends Decreasing order of frequency • Sensori-motor • Syllables • Trends • Sensori-motor • Conclusion Nber of vowels per lgg Vallée (1994)

• Background The role of production constraints • Questions  The most frequent vowels are those representing • Vowels • Trends the greatest contrast • Sensori-motor u • Consonants • Trends • Sensori-motor • Syllables • Trends • Sensori-motor i • Conclusion a

• Background The role of production constraints • Questions  The tendency to align peripheral vowels in the • Vowels • Trends system along “straight lines” would come from a • Sensori-motor • Consonants tendency to use maximal available controls • Trends (Schwartz et al., 2007; Ménard et al. , 2008) • Sensori-motor • Syllables • Trends i u • Sensori-motor • Conclusion * e o * a

• Background The search for auditory constraints • Questions  Already present in Troubetzkoy • Vowels • Trends  In 1972, two milestone papers were published: • Sensori-motor • Consonants • Trends -Liljencrants & Lindblom (1972): Numerical • Sensori-motor simulations of vowel quality systems: the role of • Syllables perceptual contrast, Language, 48, 839-862. • Trends • Sensori-motor • Conclusion -Stevens (1972): The quantal nature of speech: Evidence from articulatory-acoustic data, in E.E. Davis & P .B. Denes (Eds.) Human communication: a unified view , New York: McGraw-Hill, 51-66.  Those papers postulate that universal trends in languages result from sensori-motor constraints

• Background The search for auditory constraints • Questions • Vowels • Trends  Liljencrants & Lindblom (1972): • Sensori-motor • Consonants Dispersion theory (DT): • Trends Sound systems are composed of units organized in • Sensori-motor • Syllables order to respect the “maximal perceptual contrast” • Trends constraint (later, “sufficient contrast”). This criteria • Sensori-motor • Conclusion explains why peripheral forms like /i u a/ and /i e a o u/ are so frequent.

• Background The search for auditory constraints • Questions  Within the DT, criteria are global or relational • Vowels • Trends • Sensori-motor • Consonants  Another theory, Stevens (1972) and the Quantal • Trends Theory (QT): • Sensori-motor • Syllables There are regions in the vocal tract for which • Trends articulatory-acoustic relationships are quantal, in the • Sensori-motor • Conclusion sense that a large articulatory movement is related to a small acoustic change, and, conversely, a small articulatory displacement yields a rapid change from one acoustic state to the other. Those quantal relationships are crucial in shaping languages sound inventories.

• Background The search for auditory constraints • Questions  Stevens (1972) and the Quantal Theory (QT): • Vowels • Trends • Sensori-motor • Consonants • Trends • Sensori-motor • Syllables • Trends • Sensori-motor • Conclusion  Basis for categorical perception