Quantal theory, enhancement and overlap

Abstract

This paper explores three aspects of a theory of speech production and perception: quantal theory, enhancement, and overlap. The section on quantal theory makes the claim that every phonological feature or contrast is associated with its own quantal footprint. This footprint for a given feature is a discontinuous (or quantal) relation between the displacement of an articulatory parameter and the acoustical attribute that results from this articulatory movement. The second and third sections address the question of how a listener might extract the underlying distinctive features in running speech. The second section shows that for a given quantally defined feature, the featural specification during speech production may be embellished with other gestures that enhance the quantally defined base. These enhancing gestures, together with the defining gestures, provide a set of acoustic cues that are potentially available to a listener who must use these cues to aid the identification of features, segments, and words. The third section shows that even though rapid speech phenomena can obliterate defining quantal information from the speech stream, nonetheless that information is recoverable from the enhancement history of the segment. We provide examples and discussion in each of these sections of the paper.