Speech: A Special Code (Learning, Development, and Conceptual Change) [Hardcover]

Alvin M. Liberman (Author)

Book Description

Publication Date: February 27, 1996 | ISBN-10: 0262121921 | ISBN-13: 978-0262121927

Alvin Liberman and his colleagues at the Haskins Laboratory in New Haven created the techniques, the methods, and the insights appropriate to the study of speech perception. This volume brings together a carefully edited collecton of twenty-three of their most important research articles, along with an introduction by Liberman that charts the progress of the research -- the errors as well as the hits -- over the past five decades.Liberman has been the main analytic and synthesizing scientist in the development of a field that must hold a fascination for those interested, most generally, in the place of speech in the biological scheme of things. The more specific implications cover a broad range: at the one extreme, the problems associated with the machine production and recognition of speech; at the other, our understanding of how children learn to read its alphabetic transcriptions, and why some can't.Major Sections : On the Spectrogram as a Visible Display of Speech. Finding the Cues. Categorical Perception. An Early Attempt to Put It All Together. A Mid-Course Correction. The Revised Motor Theory. Some Properties of the Phonetic Module. More about the Function and Properties of the Phonetic Module. Auditory vs. Phonetic Modes. Reading/Writing Are Hard Just Because Speaking/Listening Are Easy.Learning, Development, and Conceptual Change series

Editorial Reviews

Review

"In Speech, Alvin Liberman leaps from milestone to milestone in his four decades-long exploration of the speech module. It leads inevitably to the deep insight that the parity of speech perception and production hinges on articulatory gestures, which are ab initio unique to both speech and mankind. Willem Levelt, Max Planck Institute for Psycholinguistics

"What Liberman has done in this volume is to weave together thehistory and scientific substance of the field; as such it is morethan the set of findings, marvelous as these are: It succeeds inbeing a disquisition on the process of scientific discovery quitebroadly. As the best bonus of all, Liberman has brought hisincredible humor, grace, and style into the writing. This is afabulous work; it will be of lasting interest to quite a widescientific audience ranging from psychologists to cognitivescientists to philosophers of science." Lila Gleitman, University of Pennsylvania

Product Details

• Hardcover: 504 pages
• Publisher: A Bradford Book (February 27, 1996)
• Language: English
• ISBN-10: 0262121921
• ISBN-13: 978-0262121927
• Product Dimensions: 10.3 x 7.4 x 1.4 inches
• Shipping Weight: 2.7 pounds (View shipping rates and policies)
• Average Customer Review: 5.0 out of 5 stars  See all reviews (1 customer review)
• Amazon Best Sellers Rank: #3,144,964 in Books (See Top 100 in Books)

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Most Helpful Customer Reviews

3 of 5 people found the following review helpful:

5.0 out of 5 stars Al Liberman, guru of speech perception theory, reveals all, April 17, 1999

By 

JMPickett (Windy Hill Lab, Morgan Bay Rd, Surry, ME 04684) - See all my reviews

This review is from: Speech: A Special Code (Learning, Development, and Conceptual Change) (Hardcover)

Here is the saga of speech science's major figure in perception research. Liberman's story is told in reprinted papers by him and his associates. In the end there is strong evidence of a specialized part of the brain that perceives speech sounds by referring the sounds to the actions of the speech organs that would be necessary to produce them, The Motor Theory of Speech Perception. This theory and its subsequent stimulation of hundreds of experiments is the single most productive theory in speech science. A thorough critical discussion of alternative theories, by linguist Sarah Hawkins, Cambridge University, is available in my textbook "The Acoustics of Speech Communication", Allyn and Bacon, 1999. - J.M. Pickett, [e-mail].