Phonology in Perception

The speech perception process is formalized within the theoretical frameworks of Natural Phonology, Optimality Theory, and the Neigbourhood Activation Model. This title investigates the extent to which phonological knowledge plays a role in speech perception.

The book consists of nine chapters dealing with the interaction of speech perception and phonology. Rather than accepting the common assumption that perceptual considerations influence phonological behaviour, the book aims to investigate the reverse direction of causation, namely the extent to which phonological knowledge guides the speech perception process. Most of the chapters discuss formalizations of the speech perception process that involve ranked phonological constraints. Theoretical frameworks argued for are Natural Phonology, Optimality Theory, and the Neigbourhood Activation Model. The book discusses the perception of segments, stress, and intonation in the fields of loanword adaptation, second language acquisition, and sound change. The book is of interest to phonologists, phoneticians and psycholinguists working on the phonetics-phonology interface, and to everybody who is interested in the idea that phonology is not production alone.

"This volume contains exciting and potentially valuable new contributions that attempts to expand our understanding of the role of phonology and phonetics in speech perception. This volume has much to contribute for not just linguistics, but psycholinguistics more generally, and so concepts contained in this volume should form the basis of many discussions in future speech perception studies."
Andrew Blyth in: Linguist List 21.3465