<OT> Second call "Speech perception within or outside phonology?"

[Paul Boersma]

SECOND CALL FOR ABSTRACTS: DEADLINE WEDNESDAY

Workshop "Speech perception within or outside phonology?"

Date: 23-25 February 2005
Place: Cologne, Germany (part of the 27th annual DGfS meeting)

Deadline for submission of abstracts:
   15 September 2004

Organizers:
   Paul Boersma (University of Amsterdam)
   Silke Hamann (ZAS, Berlin)

Invited speakers:
   Donca Steriade (MIT)
   Paul Smolensky (Johns Hopkins)

Website:
   http://www.zas.gwz-berlin.de/events/percphon/

Description:

Cognitive psychologists define perception as the mapping from raw sensory data to abstract mental representations. Correspondingly, phoneticians and psycholinguists define speech perception as the mapping from continuous auditory features to discrete phonological representations. Speech perception researchers consistently find that this mapping is language-specific for all normally developing speakers/listeners from about nine months of age. Because of this language-specificity some linguists have tried to model perception with linguistic methods, which in phonology almost automatically means that they have tried to model perception within the framework of Optimality Theory. The earliest examples are Tesar (1997 et seq) and Tesar & Smolensky (1998 et seq), who modelled the mapping from overt stress patterns to abstract metrical structure, and Boersma (1997 et seq), who modelled the mapping from continuous F1 values to discrete vowel height categories.

Since Tesar's and Boersma's proposals involve an explicit Optimality-Theoretic modelling of both the listener's comprehension (i.e. perception and recognition) and the speaker's production, it is not surprising that several authors who acknowledge the influence of perception on phonology stay with the less elaborate original notion of Optimality Theory in which the grammar has to model production only. These authors thus tend to propose (or assume) that speech perception resides outside phonology. The earliest example is Steriade (1995 et seq), who introduces an extra-phonological perceptibility map to explain relative rankings of faithfulness constraints in production.

Since there has been little or no open discussion about the relative merits and the implications of the two competing views, this workshop invites researchers from all phonological subfields to bring empirical and theoretical evidence to bear on the issue: does perception inform the grammar from outside, or is perception inextricably woven into the grammar?

Presentations will be either 40 minutes plus 20 minutes for discussion, or 20 plus 10 minutes.

Submission information:
   Read the abstract guidelines on the website,
   and submit your abstract as plain-text email or as an anonymous PDF file
   to silke at zas.gwz-berlin.de.

Best,
   Paul & Silke