On segments and syllables in the sound structure of language: curve-based approaches to phonology and the auditory representation of speech

Abstract

Recent approaches to the syllable reintroduce continuous and mathematical descriptions of sound objects designed as “curves”. Psycholinguistic research on oral language per- ception usually refer to symbolic and highly hierarchized approaches to the syllable which strongly differenciate segments (phones) and syllables. Recent work on the auditory bases of speech percep- tion evidence the ability of listeners to extract phonetic information when strong degradations of the speech signal have been produced in the spectro-temporal domain. Implications of these observations for the modelling of syllables in the fields of speech perception and phonology are discussed.