personal comments

[Neil Todd <todd@xxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxx>]

Dear Edward and Larry

There are many outstanding problems in hearing, speech and
perception. One particular problem is that of rhythm and time
perception, and more generally that of speech prosody. Indeed,
it would not be unreasonable to suggest that it is prosody that
actually holds or binds spoken language together since it
provides a connection between segments, features, words and
higher-level grammatical processes as well as giving
information regarding lexical identity, syntactic structure,
and semantic content. Further, it is clear that rhythm and time
provide the key to a number of other important problems not
least that of auditory grouping. I believe that I have made a
modest contribution to the problem of rhythm and time
perception, as is testified by my publications in this area.

 I am well aware that some people find my ideas, models and
theories problematic, difficult to understand, over-speculative
and possibly even plain wacky. However, I think most people
would agree that science only makes progress by creativity and
imagination, particularly if one is engaged the more
theoretical end of science. Often, it turns out the creative
ideas are indeed incorrect,  but only by having them in the
first place is it possible to weed out the good from the bad.

If you disagree with something then by all means make a
criticism, even a robust criticism. However, if you have
nothing constructive to add to a discussion I think most people
would prefer it if you could refrain from making unpleasant
personal comments. If something really offends you that much
then it only takes a few seconds to delete the offending
message.

Neil Todd