Describing Controlled Variables

[rsmarken]

@MartinT

I’d give your answer a C or C-. As a minimalist exercise you are technically correct, so it’s not an F, but you are asserting that two things can be both the same and different without explaining how this can be true.

But you only asked whether the two acoustically unrelated statements were the same or different (I said “both”). You didn’t ask for an explanation of the answer.

@MartinT

You would have got a better grade if you had said in which way they were the same and in which way they were different.

So, apparently I gave the correct answer, I just didn’t give the unsolicited explanation. Why don’t you? I’m sure people would like to know why the two acoustically unrelated statements you presented are both the same or different.

Best, Rick

[amatic]

@rsmarken

PCT suggests that this model couldn’t be right.

No, you are suggesting it, not PCT. Bruce is suggesting that it is compatible with PCT.

Control of speech sounds requires that it be possible to vary the means (articulation) used to produce those sounds in order to compensate for disturbances that would otherwise prevent them from being produced as desired. Disturbances are things like chewing food while talking or variations in ambient background sound.

I don’t know anything about linguistics or theories of speech production or recognition, but this is nonsense. People can’t produce the same sounds with and without food in their mouths, they mumble and spit, and often other people can’t understand them. Did your mother never tell you to not speak with your mouth full? Losing a front tooth can make you unable to produce “th” sounds, you can’t compensate for it. If you get false teeth, you may also find it difficult to produce certain sounds as before, I remember my grandmother changed the way she spoke quite a lot.
Variations in ambient sound don’t make people change the sounds, just the loudness; or they modify the distance to the listener.

The articulatory features discovered by linguists are most likely the states of the articulators that produce the different phonemes when disturbances are not present.

Maybe. That is the common state of the mouth - no disturbances present. There are disturbances at the level of muscles - tiredness, maybe dryness of the mouth. These are controlled by the lower level systems.

I think there has to be a memory of the positions of the lips and the tongue associated with the sounds we produce. There is a memory of the sequence of movements required to produce a certain word or phrase, just like there is a memory for the path you need to make when writing letters.

I can write perfectly good letters with my eyes closed, they may be spaced a bit unevenly, but individual letters are fine. Apparently, deaf people can also learn to speak by memorizing the articulation positions for the sounds.

I don’t see why this memory couldn’t then be used for speech recognition and production. Not saying it is certainly used.

[MartinT]

The ball remains in your court. I’m not going to give you the answer to what is a trivially easy question.

Hint: Frame your answer in terms of a perceptual control hierarchy.