Introduction
One of the best-known and interesting findings in speech perception research is the “phonemic restoration phenomenon”. It is a beneficial and amazingly utilized human ability by which, “under certain conditions, sounds actually missing from a speech signal can be synthesized by the brain and clearly heard”(Kashino, 2006. P.318). This shows the brains sophisticated ability in comprehending speech in the everyday life noisy settings.
This paper explores - with illustrative demonstrations - four queries concerning different aspects of phonemic restoration:
1. Is phonemic restoration a conscious act? Are there any conditions for its activation?
2. What exactly takes place during the process of phonemic restoration? How is it best modeled?
3. Would visual/ auditory integration of a stimulus enhance phonemic restoration?
4. Does hearing impairment affect phonemic restoration?
Basic Phenomenon
The phonemic restoration phenomenon was first demonstrated by Warren (1970). He conducted an experiment on a number of listeners where he got them to listen to the sentence, “The state governors met with their respective legislatures convening in the capital city”. However, in the word “legislatures” a cough completely masked the medial “s”. Listeners stated hearing the masked phoneme. This showed that when phonemic restoration occurred, listeners were not able to identify the masking sound position in the sentence. What they received was unconsciously interpreted. In other words, the efficiency of phonemic restoration reached the extent that the listeners did not notice it. (Kashino, 2006). Amazingly, the phonemic restoration effect was not observed when “s” was masked with silence!
Bregman (1990) ex...
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This chapter focused mainly on misconceptions and attempting to clarify those misconceptions about accents. In the opinion of linguists, accent is a difficult word to define. This is due to the fact that language has variation therefore when it comes to a person having an accent or not, there is no true technical distinction because every person has different phonological aspects to their way of speaking. However, when forced to define this word, it is described as “a way of speaking” (Lippi-Green, 2012, p.44). Although Lippi- Green identified the difficulty linguists have in distinguishing between accent, dialect, and another language entirely, they were able to construct a loose way of distinguishing. Lippi- Green states that an accent can be determined by difference in phonological features alone, dialect can be determined by difference in syntax, lexicon, and semantics alone, and when all of these aspects are different from the original language it is considered another language entirely (Lippi-Green, 2012).
In an experiment, around 350 Chicagoans, were recorded reading the following paragraph, titled “Too Hot for Hockey”, this script was written specifically to force readers to vocalize vowels “that reveal how closely key sounds resemble the accent's dominant traits” (Wbez). The paragraph is as follows:
Seikel, J. A., King, D. W., & Drumright, D. G. (2010). 12. Anatomy & physiology for speech,
9 The term is borrowed from linguistics, referring to the process by which the specific nature of a given sound in a particular word changes or assimilates the sound preceding it.
I decided to go about this assignment by making a table (table 1.) and marking how many times I hear or notice nine different vocal changes, as well as certain miscellaneous anomalies.
I carried out the exercise while I was in school. I am an office aid, so I have multiple encounters with people both on the phone and in person. I felt that this would be an ideal situation in order to simulate an accurate experience someone with hearing loss. As my day began, I sat in a calculus class with my other classmates. I found it very difficult to understand what the professor was saying, especially because there were people talking all around me. The following period is when I am an office aid, and at the beginning of the period I answered multiple phone calls. Throughout these discussions, I had to repeditly ask the person on the other end of the phone to repeat themselves or speak louder. I became frustrated because I still could not hear them clearly, so I transferred them to the secretary’s desk so she could answer their
Evidence for the existence of the phonological loop comes from Baddeley (1966 in Passer, 2009) They examined the word length effect in which they presented participants with visual presentations of word lists and asked them to write t...
Lorenzi, C., Gatehouse, S., & Lever, C. (1999). Sound localization in noise in normal hearing listeners. Journal of the Acoustical Society of America, 105 (3), 1810-1820.
In the partial alphabetic phase individuals pay attention to different letters in a word in order to attempt its pronunciation, usually the first and final letters of a word are focused on, Ehri referred to this as ‘phonetic cue reading’. This is a skill which along with others which shows phonological awareness.
Hearing loss is often overlooked because our hearing is an invisible sense that is always expected to be in action. Yet, there are people everywhere that suffer from the effects of hearing loss. It is important to study and understand all aspects of the many different types and reasons for hearing loss. The loss of this particular sense can be socially debilitating. It can affect the communication skills of the person, not only in receiving information, but also in giving the correct response. This paper focuses primarily on hearing loss in the elderly. One thing that affects older individuals' communication is the difficulty they often experience when recognizing time compressed speech. Time compressed speech involves fast and unclear conversational speech. Many older listeners can detect the sound of the speech being spoken, but it is still unclear (Pichora-Fuller, 2000). In order to help with diagnosis and rehabilitation, we need to understand why speech is unclear even when it is audible. The answer to that question would also help in the development of hearing aids and other communication devices. Also, as we come to understand the reasoning behind this question and as we become more knowledgeable about what older adults can and cannot hear, we can better accommodate them in our day to day interactions.
People commonly attach significance to such differences in pronunciation or accent and in sociolinguistics, this study of phonology is considered as an important part. Usually, when two consonants come at the end of a word for instance, the /nd/ in 'hand', they are often reduce and the final /d/ becomes silent. This happens, so far in every variety of English including standard ones. The consonant In AAVE cluster is reduced variably. Also, it does not happen every
Bibliography GRADDOL, D., LEITH, D., and SWANN, J., (eds) (1996) English: history, diversity and change, Routledge in association with The Open University (course book) University College of London Phonetics department website (www.phon.ucl.ac.uk/home/estuary/queen2.htm) entered on 23/3/03
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Moreover, Field (2005) revealed that speech errors are able to provide psycholinguistics with information about the words storage and retrieval from the mental lexicon. Field explained that by classifying the speech errors into: selection errors and assemblage errors. The selection errors refer to inability of the speakers to retrieve the words that they want to produce. Substitution is an example of selection errors because the speakers may substitute one word for another word or even non-word. The selection errors indicate that the meaning and form are responsible for connecting words in the mental lexicon of the speakers. In addition, they reveal that the speakers retrieve word...
1.2. PHONOLOGICAL BACKGROUND. This part of the first section presents the inventory of Hasawi phonemes as a good reference for Results section.