Language Dynamics: Sound Categorization

A form of categorical perception occurs constantly outside the laboratory, as when different The history of research on speech perception is speakers produce the "same" word or when a speaker says replete with examples of nonlinearities, or threshold the "same" word quickly or slowly. This means that phenomena, relating acoustics to perception. These speech perception cannot be a simple concatenation of nonlinearities are essential in that they allow stable sound elements to yield syllables, syllables to yield communication despite variation in the acoustic signal words, or words to yield sentences. The interdependency across speakers, emphasis, background noise, etc. across scales reveals a complex system with nonlinearly Furthermore, the range of acoustic signals perceived as interacting elements that somehow allow veridical equivalent is much larger for speech sounds than for communication.