The mapping of the Speech Chain has so far been focused on the experimentally
more accessible links — e.g., acoustics — whereas the brain’s
activity during speaking and listening has understandably received
less attention. That state of affairs is about to change now thanks
to the new sophisticated tools offered by brain imaging technology.
At present many key questions concerning human speech processes
remain incompletely understood despite the significant research efforts
of the past half century. As speech research goes neuro, we could do
with some better answers.
In this paper I will
attempt to shed some light on some of the issues. I will do so by heeding
the advice that Tinbergen1 once gave his fellow biologists
on explaining behavior. I paraphrase: Nothing in biology makes sense
unless you simultaneously look at it with the following questions at
the back of your mind: How did it evolve? How is it acquired? How does
it work here and now?
Applying the Tinbergen strategy
to speech I will, in broad strokes, trace a path from the small and
fixed innate repertoires of non-human primates to the open-ended vocal
systems that humans learn today.
Such an agenda will
admittedly identify serious gaps in our present knowledge but, importantly,
it will also bring an overarching possibility:
It will strongly
suggest the feasibility of bypassing the traditional linguistic operational
approach to speech units and replacing it by a first-principles account
anchored in biology.
I will argue that this is
the road-map we need for a more profound understanding of the fundamental
nature spoken language and for educational, medical and technological
applications.
Cite as: Lindblom, B. (2017) Re-Inventing Speech — The Biological Way. Proc. Interspeech 2017, 3441
@inproceedings{lindblom17_interspeech,
author={Björn Lindblom},
title={{Re-Inventing Speech — The Biological Way}},
year=2017,
booktitle={Proc. Interspeech 2017},
pages={3441}
}