CUE TRADING

A process of weighing the evidence provided by one acoustic cue against the evidence provided by another. A phonetic contrast in natural speech is usually signalled by several acoustic properties of the speech signal; what is important is the strength of each cue relative to the others. For example, both pitch level and duration can serve to mark stress in English. If the pitch level of a given syllable is neutral (at the middle of a speaker’s range) then a listener automatically increases the importance attached to duration as a marker of stress.

With consonant recognition, cue trading does not simply involve features associated with the articulation of the phoneme itself. Important co-articulatory cues to a consonant’s identity are provided by the preceding or following vowel, and features such as Voice Onset Time also contribute to the judgement that is made. The consequence of this is that a set of articulatory gestures associated with a particular consonant in one vowel context may be associated with a different consonant in another vowel context. To give an example, the acoustic features that indicate the presence of / ʃ / in [ʃ a] are similar to those that indicate the presence of / ʃ / in [ʃ a]. Listeners’ judgements are influenced by the following vowel, resulting in a shift in the perceptual ‘boundary’ where / ʃ / becomes perceived as / ʃ /. In some cases, the same synthesised sounds are perceived as [ʃ] when followed by [a] and as [s] when followed by [u].

A further source of evidence is the articulation rate of the speaker. It seems that listeners are sensitive to the rate at which syllables are being uttered and adjust their perceptions accordingly. For example, exposed to a continuum of synthesised sounds which progress from [b] + vowel to [w] + vowel, listeners incline increasingly to a /b/ interpretation as the length of the vowel increases. Vowel length is an indicator of speed of articulation.

Trading relations between cues have been shown to vary according to whether a signal is processed as speech or not; this has been cited as evidence that there is a special speech mode which is distinct from other forms of auditory perception.

See also: Acoustic cue, Speech perception: phoneme variation

 Further reading: Pickett (1999)

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