Re: Stop consonant identification based on initial spectra?

[Robert Zatorre <robert.zatorre@xxxxxxxxx>]

You are looking for the classic papers of my former teacher, Sheila
Blumstein:

Blumstein SE. Stevens KN. Acoustic invariance in speech production:
evidence from measurements of the spectral characteristics of stop
consonants. [Journal Article] Journal of the Acoustical Society of
America. 66(4):1001-17, 1979 Oct. 

and

Blumstein SE. Stevens KN. Perceptual invariance and onset spectra for
stop consonants in different vowel environments. [Journal Article]
Journal of the Acoustical Society of America. 67(2):648-62, 1980 Feb.


--Robert

PS: I too vote we stop with the pet anecdotes and get onto the much more
interesting questions just raised by other people!

At 11:06 02/03/05 -0500, you wrote:
> I'm sorry to interrupt the current frenzy of
> pet anecdotes (in which no one
> has yet mentioned fish)...
>
> I'm looking for a reference that reports whether or not humans can
> identify
> stop consonants based on their initial spectra--before the formant
> transitions to the following vowel. Secondarily (though I suppose
> more
> fundamentally), are the initial spectra (first 10 msec or however
> long
> *before* formant transitions) invariant with respect to following
> vowels?
> Differences between voiced and unvoiced?
>
> Background: I had been well indoctrinated in the motor theory of
> speech
> perception, teaching my students the wonders of categorical perception
> of
> stop consonants despite widely varying formant transition profiles
> across
> different vowels (i.e., /di/ looks rather different than /du/ but 
> we
> identify /d/ in both). A recent conference poster looking at
> neurophysiological spectral representation in non-human primate
> suggested
> that response to spectra of stop consonants (without the following
> formant
> transitions) was sufficient to distinguish and identify them. Alas, I
> did
> not get the relevant human reference and have been unable to find one in
> an
> informal search of my reference books and MEDLINE.
>
> Thanks in advance,
> Peter
>
> : Peter Marvit,
> PhD                         
> <pmarvit@xxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxx> :
> : Dept. Anatomy and Neurobiology    University of Maryland
> Medical School:
> : 20 Penn Street, HSF II, Room
> S251                 
> Baltimore, MD 21201 :
> : phone 410-706-1272     
> http://www.theearlab.org    
>  fax 410-706-2512 :

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Robert J. Zatorre, Ph.D.

Montreal Neurological Institute

3801 University St.

Montreal, QC Canada H3A 2B4

phone: 1-514-398-8903

fax: 1-514-398-1338

web site: www.zlab.mcgill.ca