Speech Processing: BBS Call for Commentators

Below is the abstract of a forthcoming BBS target article on: LINEAR CORRELATES IN THE SPEECH SIGNAL: THE ORDERLY OUTPUT CONSTRAINT by HM Sussman, D Fruchter, J Hilbert & J Sirosh This article has been accepted for publication in Behavioral and Brain Sciences (BBS), an international, interdisciplinary journal providing Open Peer Commentary on important and controversial current research in the biobehavioral and cognitive sciences. Commentators must be BBS Associates or nominated by a BBS Associate. To be considered as a commentator for this article, to suggest other appropriate commentators, or for information about how to become a BBS Associate, please send EMAIL to: bbs(a)cogsci.soton.ac.uk or write to: Behavioral and Brain Sciences Department of Psychology University of Southampton Highfield, Southampton SO17 1BJ UNITED KINGDOM http://www.princeton.edu/~harnad/bbs/ http://www.cogsci.soton.ac.uk/bbs/ ftp://ftp.princeton.edu/pub/harnad/BBS/ ftp://ftp.cogsci.soton.ac.uk/pub/bbs/ gopher://gopher.princeton.edu:70/11/.libraries/.pujournals If you are not a BBS Associate, please send your CV and the name of a BBS Associate (there are currently over 10,000 worldwide) who is familiar with your work. All past BBS authors, referees and commentators are eligible to become BBS Associates. To help us put together a balanced list of commentators, please give some indication of the aspects of the topic on which you would bring your areas of expertise to bear if you were selected as a commentator. An electronic draft of the full text is available for inspection with a WWW browser, anonymous ftp or gopher according to the instructions that follow after the abstract. ____________________________________________________________________ LINEAR CORRELATES IN THE SPEECH SIGNAL: THE ORDERLY OUTPUT CONSTRAINT Harvey M. Sussman Department of Linguistics and Speech Communication University of Texas at Austin Austin TX 78712 USA sussman(a)mail.utexas.edu David Fruchter Department of Linguistics and Speech Communication University of Texas Austin TX 78712 USA fruchter(a)mail.utexas.edu Jon Hilbert 1112 Reagan Terrace Austin Texas TX 78704 USA Joseph Sirosh HNC Software Inc. 5930 Cornerstone Court West San Diego, CA 92121-3728 USA sirosh(a)hnc.com KEYWORDS: neuroethology; invariance; evolution; speech perception; place of articulation; phonology neural maps; speech production; coarticulation; homoplasy ABSTRACT: Neuroethological studies of mammalian and avian auditory systems have revealed species-specific specializations that may have implications for human speech perception. Animal neural models may provide a partial solution to the "noninvariance dilemma" in the relation between the acoustic waveform and the phonetic segment in human processing of consonant-vowel sequences. Critical sound parameters used to establish species-specific categories in the mustached bat and barn owl exhibit high correlation and linearity for physical reasons. A cue long known to be relevant to the perception of place of articulation is the second formant transition (F2). "Locus equations" describe this correlation between the F2 of a vowel and F2 measured at the onset of the consonant-vowel transition across diverse speakers and languages, and even when articulation is perturbed. This correlation (the "Orderly Output Constraint") may contribute to an evolved processing strategy in mammalian auditory systems. -------------------------------------------------------------- To help you decide whether you would be an appropriate commentator for this article, an electronic draft is retrievable from the World Wide Web or by anonymous ftp or gopher from the US or UK BBS Archive. Ftp instructions follow below. Please do not prepare a commentary on this draft. Just let us know, after having inspected it, what relevant expertise you feel you would bring to bear on what aspect of the article. The URLs you can use to get to the BBS Archive: http://www.princeton.edu/~harnad/bbs/ http://www.cogsci.soton.ac.uk/bbs/Archive/bbs.sussman.html ftp://ftp.princeton.edu/pub/harnad/BBS/bbs.sussman ftp://ftp.cogsci.soton.ac.uk/pub/bbs/Archive/bbs.sussman gopher://gopher.princeton.edu:70/11/.libraries/.pujournals To retrieve a file by ftp from an Internet site, type either: ftp ftp.princeton.edu or ftp 128.112.128.1 When you are asked for your login, type: anonymous Enter password as queried (your password is your actual userid: yourlogin(a)yourhost.whatever.whatever - be sure to include the "@") cd /pub/harnad/BBS To show the available files, type: ls Next, retrieve the file you want with (for example): get bbs.sussman When you have the file(s) you want, type: quit