Haskins Publications

Number	675
Year	1989
Drawer	12
Entry Date	11/15/1999
Authors	Repp, B. H.
Contact
Publication	Speech Communication, 8, 1-15.
url	http://www.haskins.yale.edu/Reprints/HL0675.pdf
Abstract	Investigated discontinuities in articulatory control among 3 adult men and a 9-yr-old girl. One male subject was not a native speaker of English. In previous studies (e.g., L. A. Christovich et al, 1966) Subjects' responses to steady-state isolated vowels from an acoustic continuum exhibited categorical tendencies: Some adjacent vowels were responded to more similarly than others, and the distribution of format frequencies in the total set of responses was nonuniform. Subjects in the present study were asked to produce continuous glides from /i/ to /ae/ and from /ae/ to /i/ at 3 different speeds, as well as discrete vowels along the same continuum, without any auditory models. Categorical tendencies of the kind observed previously emerged as soon as vowel glides were produced at a rate that required conscious control over the articulatory trajectory. The categorical tendencies thus seem to originate in the speech production system.
Notes