| Abstract | All known languages display duality of patterning, phonological system and structure. All spoken languages are syllabic and constrain syllabic structure in terms of consonants and vowels. The syllable is a unit of timing in articulation, of contrast and compression in perception. These functions arise from the temporal structure of of an acoustic signaling system and are fulfilled by spatial structure in the visual signaling system of American Sign Language. Syllabic compression poses a problem for the perceiver, if he is to recover discrete message units from an unsegmented signal. A possible mechanism based on acoustic feature detectors, for accomplishing the segmentation, and an alternative process, based on perceptual contrast and continuous tracking of the signal, are considered. |
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