6 – Sensorimotor Aspects of Speech Development

Anyone capable of enjoying poetry will almost surely agree to the proposition that speech is rhythmic. But experimental questions concerning the nature of this rhythm have only recently been asked, and answers are slow in coming. Are rhythms physically measurable in natural speech? If so, how? In what units? What is the importance of speech rhythms in normal human communication? How is rhythm acquired? Even clear formulations of the rhythm hypothesis are still quite tentative. Most advanced is the recent mathematical theory of dyadic conversion, presented by Jaffe and Feldstein,2 but there is as yet no known link between models for human dialog and the data from early experiments dealing with the rhythmic cadences out of which individual utterances are ostensibly made. This paper is a first attempt a t filling the gap. Let us begin with a review of theories of speech rhythm based upon experimental results from phonetics and upon data collected and analyzed in our laboratory from samples of spontaneous talk. A preliminary ballistic control model that can account for the data will then be proposed and shown to be compatible with known control properties of the nervous system, both in the normal adult and developing child. As many of us who are steeped in the faith all know, it was Lashley who prophesied that Chomsky was going to be right later on, even with respect to the action of the nervous system in controlling speech. Actually, it is Martin3 who traces the origin of the speech rhythm hypothesis to Lashley,4 and mounts a valiant programmatic attempt to reconcile two generative rules for stress assignment5t with a set of abstract “rhythmic trees.” Martin’s trees, constructed freely by the application of his rules and the use of null branches, supply a temporal structure for any accent pattern whatever, certainly guaranteeing effectiveness for whatever linguistic cadences may exist. He warns against the common “misconception. . that rhythm implies only periodic, repetitive behavior, like walking or breathing, and hence is too simple a concept to be of interest for speech behavior.” (Ref. 3, p. 487). The difference is, of course, that those who propose a periodicity €or speech d o not claim that speech sounds, like footsteps or inhalations, occur repetitively. Rather, it is claimed that only a particular linguistic feature, the accent or stress, recurs more or less regularly. Lehiste6 sees Classe7 and Abercrombieg as the original theorists of speech rhythm; Classe considers regular recurrence, or isochrony, of rhythmic units to be primarily a perceptual phenomenon, supported only by a tendencv for regular pacing in speech production (Ref. 6, p. 1228). For Abercrombie, on the other hand, isochrony is a

Ballistic control of rhythmic articulatory movements in natural speech

In his article "Linguistics and the Study of Poetic Languase," Stankewicz (1960) characterizes poetic organization as "co•pletely embedded in lansuage and fully deter•ined by its possibilities." The purpose of this study is to exa•ine the for• that poetic function assu•es in a lansuase that itself has a structural orsanization funda•entally different from that of oral lansuages and in which, accordinsly, the possibilities for poetic organization are radically

Wit and Humor in ASL

Three experiments were devised involving 176 subjects aged between 5-0 and 8-1 years to examine children's receptive control of a set of four intersentence relations (identity, antonymy, structure reversal, equivalence) and to relate this linguistic ability to levels of cognitive functioning as assessed by the Piagetian measureDeux Sens de l'Orientation. The results indicate a significant but moderate correlation between performance on the two tasks. Cognitive precedence with respect to corresponding linguistic ability was observed in only one of the experiments, where linguistic performance was unsually low due to phonological interference between the lexical items used. The results were interpreted as giving evidence of linguistic reversibility—partially independent from cognitive reversibility though isomorphic with it—in the perceptual-figurative mode, resulting in flexible and efficient processing of linguistic inversions and even converse relations by preoperational children. These data complement previous psycholinguistic research in the Piagetian tradition, which had shown cognitive precedence relative to corresponding linguistic processes. It is suggested that previous research had tapped mainly linguistic processes in the cognitive operational mode, and that future research needs to examine the interrelation between the two modes.

Does linguistic reversibility exist? an experimental exploration of a psycholinguistic construct

MF-$0.65 HC -$3.29 Child Language; *Cognitive Processes; Deep Structure; Experiments; Kernel Sentences; Language Learning Levels; Language Patterns; *Linguistic Competence; *Linguistic Performance; Pictorial Stimuli; Semantics; Sentence Structure; Serial Ordering; *Speech; Surface Structure; Syntax; Tables (Data); *Time On the basis of experimental data, the author makes the following observations: (1) the basic encoding processes in speech, the schemas of orders first produce elementary underlying sentences; (2) underlying sentence structure is the controlling step in the organization of speech; (3) underlying sentence structure plays a central role in regulating the duration of speech; (4) various processes that relate to speech take widely different amounts of time; (5) therefore, there is a definite correspondence between grammatical structure and linguistic performance. Tables containing data concerning temporal duration and a bibliography of references are included. (DD) FILMED FROM BEST AVAILABLE COPY The Two-Fold Way for Speech

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David McNeill

Papers

The Two-Fold Way for Speech.