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Speech, The Alphabet &Representation___________________________________________________________________KAJ NYMAN

0. ABSTRACT To alphabetic literates, the auditory impressions of speech correspond to linear sequences of sounds. Detailed phonetic analysis shows that a segmental-procedural account of speech is largely untenable. Not only does the timing of speech gestures and articulatory-acoustic features reflect a highly complex organisation, but alphabetic literates tend to segment speech into segment-sized units fairly automatically (especially when trying to describe utterance constituents). This phenomenon may simply be a by-product of literacy, regardless of whether reference is ultimately made to phonemes in speech perception and production. Secondly, the procedural account of speech perception is just as ill-conceived, since segmental-phonemic constituents are considered to be activated prior to the establishment of meaning. This paper attempts to show that putting away from a serial/procedural alphabetic view of speech is essential to the study of linguistics and speech science.

1. INTRODUCTION: WHY PHONEMES?

1.1 Linguistic History and the Perceptual SystemIn order to comprehend why the phoneme has enjoyed such high regard within the study of linguistics, two things should be emphasised, (A) The recent history of the study of linguistics and (B) the way in which we form speech percepts (and especially the way alphabetic literates do this). However, before going into more detail, consider the following quotation:

“Speaking and writing are different in both origin and practice. Our ability to use language is as old as humankind … Writing … is a comparatively recent development ... The contrast between speech and writing comes into a sharper focus when we consider that spoken language is acquired without specific formal instruction, whereas writing must be taught and learned through deliberate effort. There are entire groups of people in the world today, as well as individuals in every literate society, who are unable to write. While spoken language comes naturally to human beings, writing does not (Dobrovolsky & O’ Grady, 1997 : 591).

The emergence of the alphabet and especially the concept of the phoneme may simply be a by-product of the way our perceptual system functions. Fowler (1980: 114-115) shows that the mind has a set of concepts of phonological segments that are imposed on the acoustic signal (which has no

___________________________________________________________________Vernaculum, Issue 1 (Summer 2009)

invariant cues of segmentalness) in the course of perception. At the same time, segments are given neither in the acoustic signal nor in the articulatory gestures responsible for it.

The way in which alphabetic script has been widely disseminated throughout history has had a huge impact on language study, and even its psychological underpinnings. There is reason to note that the Greco-Roman Alphabet is merely one form of alphabetic script (beside many other writing systems, including logographic scripts, syllabaries, hieroglyphics, pictograms, etc.). The fact that a comparatively small amount of western researchers have succeeded in introducing descriptively attractive concepts (such as the phoneme and distinctive features) offers no guarantee or sound support for the true nature of speech perception and production.

On the contrary, fields such as generative grammar, though in many ways useful to linguistic research, may have been asking the wrong questions from the start. This is because numerous preconceptions were set on linguistic phenomena about whose underlying representations and perceptual correlates very little was known. For example, take the notion of deletion (such as the realisation of bilabials in word pairs such as ‘bomb’ and ‘bombard’): just because a concept is (intuitively) attractive does not mean that it in any way represents the true character of linguistic representations.

At the end, language is primarily a spoken thing. Writing seems a very natural thing to literates, which makes it difficult to approach the relation between speech and writing objectively (Abercrombie, 1965: 86). This almost certainly also makes our approach to e.g. the relation between letters and sounds more intuitive than factual. For example, in my time as a university student, I have never come across a person thinking of anything else than ‘letter sounds’ or syllables as the minimal units of (spoken) language. This suggests that (alphabetic) literacy gives rise to clear preconceptions as far as e.g. the representation and deeper character of language are concerned.

Abercrombie (1965: 86-87) also notes that society makes important demands for (what he calls) shorthand writing systems, and that visual symbolisation of speech is required for in more ways than previously. This is even more apparent in the 21st century with the advent of the Internet, e-mail communication and other similar inventions. Abercrombie (1965: 91) shows that a system that is easily learned by children and easily handled by e.g. printing is called for in today’s world. In other words, certain concessions have to be made in order to adequately represent language visually.

At the same time, despite the many characteristics shared by vision and audition (e.g. that the more global aspects of percepts are usually attended to first, Abercrombie, 1965: 88), the two modalities have certain clear differences. The most important of these is the more spatial awareness of vision and the more temporal requirements set on auditory perception (cf. Ward, 2006: 209). This means that we cannot simply extrapolate findings from audition to vision (and vice versa). A safer and more productive bet is to appreciate the differences between the two and what this entails for e.g. speech production

34Nyman: SPEECH, THE ALPHABET & REPRESENTATION___________________________________________________________________


and perception. Just because certain (e.g. letter units and segments) exist does not mean that they have the representations and character envisaged for them by e.g. generative phonology (Coleman, 2002: 97-98).

Also, regardless of the fact that visual gestures are important for exemplifying meaning and contribute to communication in general (Abercrombie, 1963: 72-73), the fact remains that there are certain inherent differences between audition and vision, which makes it impossible to represent them in the same way for other than descriptive purposes (at best).

Also, as Abercrombie puts it (1963: 21) affirms, spoken language is primary in two ways: (1) it emerged in human history before writing and (2) is acquired prior to learning to read and write. In other words, not only are the physical and theoretical differences between speech and writing notable, but even the historical distinctions have had huge consequences for e.g. language teaching. For example, Abercrombie (1963: 21) questions whether spoken language is still primary for foreign language teaching. At the end, then, speech comes naturally, whereas writing emerges artificially.

This is not meant to e.g. imply that segments are completely useless: for example, they are good descriptive tools in phonetic/phonological transcription. The point here is that

(A) in the past (especially before the middle of the 20th century), the availability of proper instrumentation for detailed phonetic analysis of speech utterances was very limited. We had no direct way of knowing how spoken language really functions and

(B) the willingness to accept anything else than, say, letters or phonemes as the minimal units of speech was thus clearly constrained.

The latter may simply depend on the long and widespread influence of alphabetic scripts (Abercrombie, 1965:86-87) and what immediate repercussions this had for e.g. educational purposes (as mentioned above). The demands that current linguistic research sets on us makes it impossible to fully appreciate alphabetic views of spoken language (also cf. subsection 1.2), no matter how well designed or detailed they may be.

1.2 On ‘Segments’ and Language AbilityIn any case, a sharp distinction must be drawn between the neural mechanisms and representations for speech and the way it is physically represented in the acoustics. The theoretical relation between these phenomena is, after all, arbitrary (Dobrovolsky & O’ Grady, 1997: 591). In fact, there is a lot of very convincing evidence against segments (and phonemes in particular). For example, the finding that familiarity with particular voices helps segmentation of difficult phonemically ambiguous sequences in poor listening conditions is quite inconsistent with accounts of perceptual learning that are based solely on phonemic representations (Smith, 2007: 1920). At the same time, it has been



widely shown that illiterates cannot segment speech into e.g. phoneme sized units (although they can do so with syllables, Coleman, 2002: 112 and Dobrovolsky and O’Grady, 1997: 620). As a final example, not only can non-segmental analysis be applied to phonetic phenomena (such as coarticulation) but can also represent purely phonological phenomena (such as the differing contrasts between words such as ‘Meat’/’Nod’, ‘latter’ – ‘ladder’ and ‘blade’ – ‘played’ (cf. Coleman, 1998 for more details on these). For instance:

FIGURE 1: A Non-Segmental Analysis of Coarticulation.

Figure 1 shows how phonological features spread over constituents of various sizes. For example, all vocalic features (such as the ones for height and roundedness) spread over entire syllables (or the rime), while only place of articulation of consonants may be considered to be a terminal node feature). In other words, this also means that phonemes can never be fully specified at the level they are supposed to exist. This has been partially adapted from Coleman, 1998: 179.

Several other similar examples could be given here. However, it suffices to say that in light of all the evidence against segmental representations (especially recent researches, such as Hawkins, 2003 and the work on linguistic exemplars by S. Goldinger), we are ultimately faced with the question that should we continue searching for answers to segmental problems or should we acknowledge that speech is a far more complex phenomenon than previously envisaged.



‘Nod’ [nɒd] ‘Meat’ [mi:t]

With respect to the latter, there is reason to note that there may be no single linguistic unit capable of adequately representing speech (also cf. Goldinger & Azuma, 2003), because meaning is distributed across many levels and context dictates what is relevant to/for communication and whether reference is made to e.g. phonemes, words (etc.) in perception and production (Hawkins, 2003: 373).

As a final note in the introduction, a fact about perception and writing will be discussed. According to Dobrovolsky & O’Grady (1997: 619), different orthographies place different demands on their readers. For example, different parts of the brain are used to interpret logographic scripts and phonographic scripts such as syllabaries and alphabets. People suffering from e.g. Broca’s aphasia retain the ability to use language logographically, but the use of syllabaries and alphabets tend to be severely disrupted by these kinds of disorders. This example strongly suggests that our ability to use language has little to do with the ability to segment speech into e.g. phonemes and represent language alphabetically. Instead, emphasis should be placed on speech as a phenomenon distinct from writing whose inherent mechanisms may be quite different to segmental representations (also cf. the initial model in subsection 3.2.3).

2. RESEARCH METHODS

2.1 Theory or Data?In recent history (especially within the sphere of generative grammar) there has been a strong focus on e.g. syntactic and phonological theory, as opposed to examining naturally occurring speech data. From a purely scientific (and even a theoretical) viewpoint, this development is very unfortunate, since it has been shown that many of the conventional theories, though in many ways attractive, cannot adequately handle how e.g. different phonologies ‘compute’ their appropriate phonetic outputs. The apparent explanation for this entire development may stem from a lack of adequate observation and detailed examination of speech utterances in context. This is essential for developing a good understanding of linguistic phenomena, since context shapes our understanding of linguistic meaning (Ogden, 2005: 189).

2.2 Data and Fine Phonetic Detail (FPD)Although the Firthian tradition (and the Anglo-Scandinavian one) and subsequent off-spring theories and researches (such as the ones by Hawkins, 2003 and Local, 2003) seem to have a better understanding of the importance of FPD, they do not tell us very much about the neural underpinnings of speech. The discussion subsection attempts to (A) reinforce what has been mentioned above (by way of giving a few good examples of naturally occurring data) and (B) offer some pointers to a better understanding of the potential neural mechanisms to do with speech perception.



3. DISCUSSION

Not only have researchers been unable of offering good support for neural correlates for segments1 (such as phonemes – also cf. Coleman, 2002: 118), but it can equally well be shown that the segmental(-procedural) view of speech is fraught with many problems, both theoretical and descriptive. For example, Local and Kelly (1986), Tunley (1999) and West (1999) show that the distinction between sentences such as ‘we saw the miller yesterday’ and ‘we saw the mirror yesterday’ lies in the long-domain influence of liquids (at least in British English) and that liquid features spread over constituents much larger than segments. Utterances of this kind can be distinguished several syllables away from where the supposed ‘segmental’ differences lie. Similarly, Hawkins (2003) shows that the phonetic exponents of utterances such as ‘I don’t know’ vary considerably depending on phonetic and social context. For example, [ai dənˈnəʊ] and [d̥nəʊ] are acceptable in general communicative contexts, whereas only family members would use forms such as [ə̞̃ə̃ə̝̃] (and in very specific situations). Segmental accounts of speech cannot adequately explain these kinds of phenomena, since phonemes are concerned to have primacy at all levels. This gives strong reason to believe that although segments may be important at certain levels or in certain communicative situations, we should be searching for alternative and more convincing theoretical and physiological correlates for representation, production and perception, etc.

3.1. Why Features?The following subsections offer a potentially robust account of perception. Although the model is rather crude, it remains far more plausible and verifiable than e.g. transformational accounts, since it mainly stems from modern findings and does not have as many preconceptions about speech as conventional theories do. This is particularly evident with respect to issues concerning alphabetical accounts of speech, which the theory attempts to falsify.

More importantly, as recent work in audition clearly shows that e.g. frequency has a very important bearing on speech perception, this offers good reason to believe that (auditory-phonetic) features are more plausible neural correlates for speech phenomena, especially when they are hierarchically organised. For example, Ward (2006: 209) shows that the primary auditory cortex (henceforth PAC), which forms an important part in the perception of auditory processes, is organised tonotopically. In other words, different regions of the PAC process different frequencies, which are spread over time in specific ways in the speech signal. Ward also confirms that it is subtle changes in sound over time that enable us to make distinctions between different speech components, as in the perception of coarticulatory effects. Even if phonetic-articulatory gestures



1 Some researchers (such as Näätänen 2001 and Näätänen et al, 1997) claim to have found neural correspondences for phonemes, while only really giving convincing evidence for features, such as the importance of F2 for distinguishing vowels.

are valuable tools in the process of speech production and the acoustic signal seems to perceptually resemble a linear sequence of segments/phonetic gestures, the process of speech perception may not rely nearly as closely on segmental constituents, other than when circumstances so dictate (also cf. Hawkins, 2003).

Also, since subtle changes in sound over time indeed enable us to distinguish between e.g. coarticulatory affects, it seems very likely that e.g. the timing and proper organisation of feature-spreading is essential for a good and reliable understanding of both phonetic and phonological phenomena in (spoken) language. After all, it has been clearly shown that feature-spreading and the organisation (e.g. timing) of segmental constituents differs considerably across languages. For instance, English plosives coarticulate more extensively with vocalic gestures than in many other languages, such as Russian (Hardcastle & Hewlett, 1997: 41).

3.2 A Representation of the Perceptual Process in Speech Perception

3.2.1 FrequencyIt is clear from previous research (see e.g. Styles, 2006 and Cooke, 2009) that 1) frequency is a more effective selective cue for auditory stimuli than location and 2) that the basilar membrane acts as a frequency analyser since differing frequencies cause maxima of vibration at different places along the membrane. In other words, 1) frequency acts as an essential analysis tool in audition (e.g. in attending to a specific frequency band) and 2) the frequency of vibration at a given place along the basilar membrane corresponds to that of the nearest stimulus component” (Cooke, 2009: 12).

What is not clear from previous research is how the inner/central auditory pathways interact (top-down analysis) with the basilar membrane (bottom-up analysis) in making use of frequency to adequately analyse speech stimuli.

Styles (2006: 134) argues that the setting of auditory attention (e.g. focussing on a specific frequency band) must be an entirely internal process, since the sensory apparatus of the ears cannot move around the auditory scene like the eyes can move around the visual one. In other words, it seems very likely that listeners need some sort of tuning in process, just as we can tune a radio to a specific frequency that we want to listen to.

Styles (2006: 134) also notes that

“[M]essages from receptors in the cochlea feed afferent signals through the auditory pathways to more specialised auditory areas and the auditory cortex and these higher brain centres have efferent pathways that provide feedback. The olivocochlear bundle (OCB) is a bundle of 1400 efferent nerve fibres that transmit neural information from the auditory centres in the temporal lobe back to the cochlea. This top-down, neural information may be able to prepare the hair cells on the basilar membrane of the cochlea to be more



responsive to one frequency rather than another. So although the auditory selection may be implemented at the receptors, the message that determines the basis of that selectivity has been generated internally. Given a sample of tone to be attended, top-down activation can feedback to enhance processing of the selected frequency.”

Lastly, Styles notes that this ability of the OCB to selectively bias responses of the auditory system could be one important mechanism that allows us to attend to specific frequencies or a particular voice (also cf. Wang & Brown, 2006) at the cocktail party (Styles, 2006: 135).

3.2.2 ExemplarsWhat has been shown in subsection 3.2.1 may all be true, but we may still ask ourselves: so what? This is because the debate about normalisation of linguistic percepts is still very much ongoing (cf. e.g. Norris et al, 2003). Ever since the rise of generative grammar in the early 20th century, many researchers have assumed that linguistic percepts are normalised against prototypical representations. However, recent evidence (cf. e.g. Pierrehumbert, 2001, Goldinger, 1998, etc.) clearly points to the fact that this stance may be ill-conceived, because it does not allow for encoding variability within representation (Docherty et al, 2002:393-395).

Although the debate about exemplars is still far from settled (Cf. e.g. Tamminen & Gaskell, 2008), this line of research seems to offer a more plausible and more useful account of linguistic perception, since 1) linguistic variability is an inherent part of language and 2) speakers structure their speech according to the demands of social context (Docherty et al, 2002: 395-396).

According to Pierrehumbert (2001: 1) “Over the last decades, a considerable body of evidence has accumulated that speakers have detailed phonetic knowledge of a type which is not readily modelled using the categories and categorical rules of phonological theory. One line of evidence is systematic differences between languages in fine details of pronunciation”.

She goes on to note that

“[A] particularly interesting and challenging result is the discovery that learned phonetic detail may be associated not just with languages or dialects, but even with specific words in the lexicon of a given dialect … A particularly interesting and challenging result is the discovery that learned phonetic detail may be associated not just with languages or dialects, but even with specific words in the lexicon of a given dialect.”

These kinds of findings constitute significant problems for conventional theories of both phonetics/phonology and perception/production. Furthermore, Goldinger (1996: 1167) claims that memory related tests are called for in settling the issue of representation, since phonetic/phonological (etc.) representations must be stored in memory. In the view taken here, this



claim is very convincing, since it clearly relies on pure logic in assessing the issue of representation (rather than intuition, for instance).

3.2.3 An Initial Model for Perception and RepresentationSince frequency is strictly a feature relating to formants (for instance) and has been shown to be represented in the auditory cortex (Ward, 2006: 209), the perceptual system may make use of acoustic/auditory-phonetic features (rather than segments/phonemes) in the analysis process. Not only has the phoneme-related account of speech been shown to pause considerable problems for both perception and production, but a feature based declarative non-segmental view of speech may offer good and convincing evidence for these claims and does not pose the kinds of problems which standard theories (such as SPE and autosegmental phonology) suffer from.

The point of this discussion is not to offer a complete account of phonetic perception (or production) as such, but to pinpoint other researchers/students in a potentially more useful direction. At the same time, an attempt is made to offer a modern account of speech perception, relying almost exclusively on 21st and late 20th century works in the field.

For example, the early perceptual processing system in this model might be crudely represented as follows:

Firstly, the acoustic signal enters the ear:

FIGURE 2: The Ear [Adapted from Cooke, 2009: 3].

After peripheral analysis and appropriate mechanical conversions in the outer and middle ears (cf. e.g. Cooke, 2009: 4), the signal enters the cochlea.



FIGURE 3: The Cochlea (Inner ear) [Adapted from Cooke, 2009: 11].

The mechanical vibrations cause vibrations in the incompressible cochlear liquids, which ultimately modulate the release of chemical neurotransmitter. Finally, the build up of this gives rise to the production of an electrical impulse in an auditory nerve fibre (Cooke, 2009: 4).

This is the point where our current understanding of human audition passes into a somewhat grey area. This is largely due to our inadequate understanding of the way the higher/central neural system functions. Nevertheless, recent research has given rise to significant advancements. Here the article attempts to integrate these facts and respective findings into a mutually reinforcing system. As the above discussions clearly show that frequency seems to constitute a significant ‘tool’ for speech perception, we may theorise about the higher auditory system as follows:



FIGURE 4: The Speech Perceiving Brain [Adapted from Ward, 2006: 211].

Although the first few synaptic levels of the PAC do not seem preferentially specialised for speech perception (Bernstein, 2005: 84), higher synaptic levels seem to be integral for adequately analysing speech percepts. These include the OCB and the superior temporal sulcus (STS).

There is clear reason to admit that the following discussion may amount to partial speculation and gross simplification. However, from what has been established above, it seems quite reliable.

When the inner ear has established the electrical impulse in an auditory nerve fibre (Cooke, 2009: 4), more central brain centres (e.g. the angular gyrus – the ‘phonological buffer’ – cf. figure 3) would send sample clouds of phonetically and/or linguistically similar exemplars to the cochlea for comparison with the bottom-up analysed signal. When the most likely candidate emerges (also cf. Pierrehumbert, 2001), the signal can be transmitted along the OCB and STS to the final areas, where recognition takes place. The OCB and STS assist in this process, by way of analysing the signal for spectral (e.g. frequency) and temporal feature combinations (Styles, 2006: 134-135 and Bernstein, 2005: 85), so that the final neural regions can form robust percepts of the top-down/bottom-up analysed signal. Bernstein (2005: 85) also discusses other associations concerning the STS, which may help to disambiguate the representations for repeating lexical forms and the ones for word representations and associate knowledge, etc. The point of all this is that different central regions seem at least partially specialised for speech perception and in different ways. However, this only seems to occur at more central levels higher than the initial synaptic levels of the PAC.



Despite all these claims, one of the points of the latter part of article is to show that a way around the problems that speech perception presents may slowly be starting to emerge, regardless of the rather limited understanding that we have of the brain and its neural functions.

4. SUMMARY & CONCLUSIONS

• Alphabetic accounts of speech severely constrain our understanding of spoken language

• We should appreciate the differences between the visual and auditory channels concerning language, in order to gain a better understanding of issues to do with e.g. representation, production, perception, the differences between phonetics and phonology, etc.

• Theory should not be emphasised at the cost of adequately analysing linguistic-phonetic data, while always taking note of the specific context in which features occur.

• As a feature, frequency is a very useful tool in speech perception, and can be modelled accordingly all the way from phonetic and phonological input to the final percept.

• Linguistic exemplars may provide the key to a better understanding of speech perception and speech processing in particular, since exemplars allow for encoding variability within representation.

5. REFERENCES

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BERNSTEIN, L. 2005. ‘Phonetic Processing By the Speech Perceiving Brain’. In Pisoni, D. & Remez, R. (eds.) 2005. Handbook of Speech Perception. Malden, MA., etc. Blackwell publishing, pp. 79-98.

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COLEMAN, J. 2002. ‘Mental Representations in the Lexicon’. In Phonetics, Phonology and Cognition, Oxford, Oxford University Press.

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DOCHERTY, G., FOULKES, P., TILLOTSON, J. and WATT, D. 2002. ‘On the Scope of Phonological Learning: Issues Arising from Socially- Structured Variation. In Laboratory Phonology 8. Goldstein, L., Whalen, D. & Best, C. (eds.) Berlin and New York, Mouton De Gruyter.

DOBROVOLSKY, M. and O’GRADY, W. 1997. ‘Writing and Language’ In Contemporary Linguistics: An Introduction. Dobrovolsky, M. O’Grady, W. and Katamba, F. (eds.) London and New York, Longman, pp. 591-624.

FOWLER, C. 1980. Coarticulation and Theories of Extrinsic Timing. J. Phonetics, vol. 8. pp. 113-133.

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GOLDINGER, S. & Azuma, T. 2003. ‘Puzzle-Solving Science: the Quixotic Search for Units in Speech Perception. J. Phonetics, Vol. 31, pp. 305-320.

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HAWKINS, S. 2003. ‘Roles and Representations of Systematic Fine Phonetic Detail in Speech Understanding’. J. Phonetics, vol. 31, pp. 373-405.

KELLY, J. & LOCAL, J. 1986. ‘Long-Domain Resonance Patterns in English’. Institute of Electronic Engineers: Proceedings of the International Conference on Speech Input/Output, pp. 304-308.

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NÄÄTÄNEN, R., LEHTOKOSKI, A., LENNES, M., CHEOUR, M., HUOTILAINEN, M., IIVONEN, A., VAINIO, M., ALKU, P., ILMONIEMI, R. J., LUUK, A., ALLIK, J., SINKKONEN, J., & ALHO, K. Language-Specific Phoneme Representations Revealed by Electric and Magnetic Brain Responses. Nature, 385, 432–434.

NÄÄTÄNEN, R. 2001. ‘The Perception of Speech Sounds by the Human Brain as Reflected by the Mismatch Negativity (MMN) and Its Magnetic Equivalent (MMNm). Psychophysiology, vol. 38, pp. 1–21. USA, Cambridge University Press.

OGDEN, R. 2005. ‘The Phonetics of Agreement and Disagreement’. York Papers in Linguistics, Series 2, issue 5, pp. 189-220.

PIERREHUMBERT, J. (2001) Exemplar Dynamics: Word frequency, Lenition, and Contrast. J. Bybee and P. Hopper (eds.). Frequency Effects and the Emergence of Lexical Structure. John Benjamins, Amsterdam, p p . 137-157.

SMITH, R. 2007. ‘The Effect of Talker Familiarity on Word Segmentation in Noise’. Fourteenth International Conference in Phonetic Sciences, Saarbrücken, 6-10 August 2007, pp. 1917-1920.



http://www.ling.northwestern.edu/%7Ejbp/publications/exemplar_dynamics.pdf




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speech, the alphabet representation€¦ · speech, the alphabet & representation _____ kaj...

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