Query Details

Query Subject:	Acoustic Discreteness vs. Continuity in Production
Author:	Peyton Todd
Submitter Email:	click here to access email

Linguistic LingField(s):	Phonetics Phonology

Query:	Hello. I have two related questions: 1. No one doubts that phonemes are discrete. They are perceived categorically, for example. But is it known whether their pronunciation is discrete ACOUSTICALLY? That is, imagining an acoustic 'space' - I don't know how many dimensions - maybe height of formant 1, height of formant 2, amount of fricative noise, etc? - how much overlap is there? To keep it simple, assume I'm asking about a single speaker:. I presume there is at least some overlap, but is it substantial? 2. The above question was really to set the context for my main question, which is about intonation. To many people, intonation at least seems to vary continuously. I realize that there are theories (e.g. Pierrehumbert's) which claim there are discrete tones (H, L, evidently M for some) and discrete positions for them (H*, H-, H%, etc.) and further constellations thereof ('surprise-redundancy', 'contrast-incredulity', etc.), but: do their ACOUSTIC profiles 'clump' ( in the productions of a given speaker) to the same extent as what I presume is found for segmental phonemes? Does it do so at all? References which show this? Thanks for any help you can provide! Peyton Todd
LL Issue:	16.3394
Date posted:	28-Nov-2005
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