28.4928, Review: Neurolinguistics; Phonetics; Phonology; Psycholinguistics: Kotzor, Lahiri (2017)

[The LINGUIST List]

LINGUIST List: Vol-28-4928. Sat Nov 25 2017. ISSN: 1069 - 4875.

Subject: 28.4928, Review: Neurolinguistics; Phonetics; Phonology; Psycholinguistics: Kotzor, Lahiri (2017)

Moderators: linguist at linguistlist.org (Damir Cavar, Malgorzata E. Cavar)
Reviews: reviews at linguistlist.org (Helen Aristar-Dry, Robert Coté,
                                   Michael Czerniakowski)
Homepage: http://linguistlist.org

Please support the LL editors and operation with a donation at:
           http://funddrive.linguistlist.org/donate/

Editor for this issue: Clare Harshey <clare at linguistlist.org>
================================================================


Date: Sat, 25 Nov 2017 13:14:33
From: Maria Teresa Martinez-Garcia [mtmg87 at gmail.com]
Subject: The Speech Processing Lexicon

 
Discuss this message:
http://linguistlist.org/pubs/reviews/get-review.cfm?subid=36315377


Book announced at http://linguistlist.org/issues/28/28-1829.html

EDITOR: Aditi  Lahiri
EDITOR: Sandra  Kotzor
TITLE: The Speech Processing Lexicon
SUBTITLE: Neurocognitive and Behavioural Approaches
SERIES TITLE: Phonology and Phonetics [PP]
PUBLISHER: De Gruyter Mouton
YEAR: 2017

REVIEWER: Maria Teresa Martinez-Garcia, Hankuk University of Foreign Studies

REVIEWS EDITOR: Helen Aristar-Dry

SUMMARY 

The book “The Speech Processing Lexicon: Neurocognitive and Behavioural
Approaches”, edited by Professors Aditi Lahiri and Sandra Kotzor, collects
various contributions from scholars working on phonological processing. This
special volume was prepared to recognize Professor Sheila Blumstein’s many and
sustained contributions to the understanding of phonological processing and it
stems from a workshop held at The Lords of the Manor (Cotswolds, UK), funded
by the European Research Council. The book consists of an introduction and
eleven chapters, covering a wide range of topics on acoustics,
psycholinguistics, and neurolinguistics processing. Each of these chapters has
a common aim: To provide new evidence regarding how speech and language are
represented and processed in the brain, outlining the current direction of
research in the field of phonological processing since Professor Blumstein
started investigating the speech signal in the 1970s.

In the introduction, Professors Allard Jongman and Aditi Lahiri trace a short
profile of Professor Blumstein’s activity in both researching and teaching,
emphasizing how her work has impacted our current understanding on how speech
is stored and represented in the brain. This first chapter is clear in
motivating the rest of the book, as a way of understanding how Blumstein’s
work has influenced our current understanding of the field, opening new areas
for future research. The rest of the chapters in this commemorative volume are
all inspired by Professor Blumstein’s work, by covering a wide range of topics
reflecting her interests, models, and methodologies – acoustic analysis,
eliciting speech production, behavioural as well as neurolinguistics
experiments – all of which have been explored by her.

The studies presented in this volume vary in their specificity of
representation. The different chapters in this book cover topics ranging from
a more episodic approach considering talker specificity in Julia R. Drouin,
Nicholas R. Monto, and Rachel M. Theodore (“Talker-specificity effects in
spoken language processing: Now you see them, now you don’t”) to
underspecified representation in Sandra Kotzor, Allison Wetterlin, and Aditi
Lahiri (“Symmetry or asymmetry: Evidence for underspecification in the mental
lexicon”). The invariance and categorization of phonological features is
touched upon from different perspectives by Professor Sheila E. Blumstein
herself (“Phonetic categories and phonological features: Evidence from the
cognitive neuroscience of language”) as well as in chapters by Allard Jongman
& Bob McMurray (“On invariance: Acoustic input meets listener expectations”),
Emily Myers, Alexis, R. Johns, Sayako Earle, and Xin Xie (“The invariance
problem in the acquisition of non-native phonetic contrasts: From instances to
categories”), Joan A. Sereno (“How category learning occurs in adults and
children”), and Kotzor, Wetterlin, & Lahiri. Vipul Arora and Henning Reetz
(“Automatic speech recognition: What phonology can offer”) provide further
evidence for the invariance of phonological features (rather than segments)
via machine learning. 

The studies reported in this book are not “only” limited to speech processing
and representation in the brain, but some of the research also intends to
provide evidence for interactions across multiple levels of language and
speech processing. In this regard, Sara Guediche’s chapter (“Flexible and
adaptive processes in speech perception”) reviews behavioural and functional
neuroimagining results that provide evidence for interactions across multiple
levels of language and speech processing, and Eiling Yee’s chapter (“Fluid
semantics: Semantic knowledge is experience-based and dynamic”) focuses
primarily on understanding how semantic information is stored and represented
in the mental lexicon, by comparing how visual and perceptual information is
integrated. 

The invariance problem is further discussed in this volume by covering an
equally broad number of phonological units.
Equally broad is the coverage of phonological units covered in this volume and
which play a role in the invariance problem: variability in segmental features
(e.g., the variability of cues that distinguish between fricative sounds in
Jongman & McMurray), duration contrasts (e.g., the consonant duration
differences in Bengali discussed in Kotzor, Wetterlin, & Lahiri), stress and
tone (cf. Chao-Yang Lee, “Processing acoustic variability in lexical tone
perception”) are all addressed. Issues about processing also extend to
acquisition, multilingualism and language disorders, addressing concerns with
processing phonological information by children (cf. Sereno), non-native
speakers as well as speakers with language deficits (cf. Jack Ryalls and
Rosalie Perkins, “Foreign accent syndrome: Phonology or phonetics?”). 
 
EVALUATION 

This volume is very rich in both content, and experimental and theoretical
approaches, which are presented and discussed by the authors of the single
chapters. It is important to highlight how the different methodologies and
perspectives proposed perfectly reflect the very complex topic of phonological
processing, providing a more detailed perspective on how speech and language
are stored and processed in the brain of different populations. That is, this
book is not limited to understanding how one group (e.g., healthy adult native
speakers) process speech, but compares them with other groups such as children
and non-native speakers, as well as speakers with language deficits. Not only
the variability is found in the samples from which the conclusions are drawn,
but also on the variability of methods employed and discussed (from different
perception and production tasks, to neurolinguistics, machine learning, and
automatic speech recognition approaches). All this variability provides a
broader, more comprehensive perspective on the phenomenon of phonological
processing and on our understanding on how speech may be represented, stored,
and processed in the brain. Considering factors such as different
methodological paradigms or different populations, as this book considers, is
one of the first steps towards addressing the problem of lack of
generalizability of linguistics research (e.g., Chalhoub-Deville, Chapelle, &
Duff, 2006; Krathwohl, 1993).

Another important addition of this book is the importance given to both
theoretical discussion and methodological considerations, two points variously
addressed in almost every chapter. It is to be noted that before Professor
Blumstein started investigating the speech signal in the 1970s (e.g.,
Blumstein, Baker, & Goodglass, 1977), the prevalent scientific opinion was
that there was no simple mapping between acoustic signal and perceived
phonemes due to the variability observed in the speech signal (e.g., Halle,
1964). This volume is crucial to recognize how our understanding on the
processing of speech has changed over the last 40 years and continues to
change. Moreover, the editors have managed to include contributions from
different authors, not only well-known researchers in the field (e.g.,
professors Blumstein, Jongman, McMurray, or Sereno), but also from young
scholars, which testifies to the interest in this field, the emergence of a
new generation of researchers, who add new perspectives on the path drawn by
the experts, and their willingness to address all the open questions that
still remain in the field.

This book is, without doubt, an excellent compendium of the different models,
methodologies, samples of participants and data which are covered in the vast
field of phonological processing. It is rather difficult to find negative
remarks on this extremely precise collection of contributions. However, and
personally, I think that this volume could have benefited from a final
conclusion written by the editors, with a main summary of the topics covered
by the contributions and a perspective on the work that still needs to be
done. It is noteworthy stating, though, that the editors do a tremendous job
introducing the topics to be discussed in the book throughout the introduction
chapter and that, even though there is not a final chapter stating potential
empirical or theoretical open questions for future research, this is something
that is included at the end of each one of the individual chapters of the
book. It seems that the editors worked hard to make sure each one of the
contributors did not only provide a clear statement of their own research and
its implications, but also that they state some of the currently open research
questions that still need to be addressed. 

Apart from providing a detailed account of some of the latest findings in the
field of phonological processing, this book represents a useful manual for
young scholars who want to open their perspectives on speech perception,
production, representation, and processing in the brain. For this reason, it
is definitely a recommendable book for those researchers interested in the
field of phonological processing, including those who are just getting started
in research. It not only provides a general overview of the field, but it
discusses potential open research questions for future research and it
provides a detailed literature review on each of the models, methodologies,
samples of participants and data that have already been studied in the
literature. This detailed literature review may be a more than suitable
resource for those new researchers that need to find the references necessary
to motivate and undertake their own research. This book is a more than
appropriate way to pay homage to Professor Sheila Blumstein’s many and
sustained contributions to the understanding in this discipline. 

REFERENCES 

Blumstein, Sheila E., Errol Baker, & Harold Goodglass. 1977. Phonological
factors in auditory comprehension in aphasia. Neuropsychologia, 15(1), 19-30. 

Chalhoub-Deville, Micheline, Carol A. Chapelle, and Patricia A. Duff, eds.
2006. Inference and generalizability in applied linguistics: Multiple
perspectives. Vol. 12. John Benjamins Publishing.

Halle, Morris. 1964. On the bases of phonology. In Fodor, J. A. & Katz, J. J.
Eds. The Structure of Language. New Jersey: Prentice-Hall.

Krathwohl, David. 1993. Methods of educational and social science research.
White Plains, NY: Longman.


ABOUT THE REVIEWER

Maria Teresa Martinez-Garcia completed her PhD in Linguistics at the
University of Kansas in August 2016. Her dissertation presented a
psycholinguistic approach to understanding bilingual activation, by exploring
how differences in stress placement between English-Spanish identical cognates
affect how adult learners of Spanish use stress as a cue for word recognition.
She continues her research on bilingualism and second language speech
perception and production while working as an assistant professor in the
Spanish department at Hankuk University of Foreign Studies. Her main research
interests include bilingualism, second language acquisition, and speech
perception and production.





------------------------------------------------------------------------------

*****************    LINGUIST List Support    *****************
Please support the LL editors and operation with a donation at:
            http://funddrive.linguistlist.org/donate/
 


----------------------------------------------------------
LINGUIST List: Vol-28-4928	
----------------------------------------------------------