[From Rick Marken (931017.2000)]
I attended the Human Factors Society meeting in Seattle last week.
I can report with considerable confidence that our secret is
still safe. There was no talk of people controlling their own
perceptions but plenty of talk about the cues, information, stimuli
and other "factors" that control people. The best part of the trip
was a visit to "Deception Pass" just north of "Useless Bay". Not
only was the scenery there beautiful, it suggested two possible
titles for the theme of next year's meeting.
Bruce Nevin (Wed 931013 12:22:50 EDT) --
..I confess I still don't know what you understand "phonemic
perceptions" to be, Rick, if they are not specified in terms of phonetic
intensities, sensations, configurations, and transitions.
I understand "phonemic perceptions" to be perceptions of components of
words (the sounds represented by letters and groups of letters); in
theory I understand them to be perceptual signals DERIVED from (not
specified in terms of) lower level perceptual signals that could be
called intensities, sensations, configurations and transitions.
A variety of sounds {s1a, .. s1z} map to p1. Another set {s2a, .. s2z}
maps to p2. Which sound is output when the person controls p1
varies depending upon disturbances. Among these disturbances are those
that influence the configurations of articulators prior to and after p1
in the intended utterance. But these adjacent configurations are
behavioral outputs due to the speaker controlling other phonemes adjacent
to p1. These are the coarticulation effects, and they result in the
"trajectory" Martin described. So p1 does not predict output of any
particular sound in the set {s1a, .. s1z}.
I completely agree with this entire statement. If you know this, then
why are we disagreeing? p1 is a controlled perception -- a consistent
result of VARIABLE outputs (the sounds s1a, s1b...s1z). Notice how
you were able to describe this phenomenon (known as "control") without
ever mentioning "contrasts". A speaker who produces p1 (by whatever
lower level means are required by prevailing constraints and disturbances)
is IMPLICITLY producing a result (p1) that CONTRASTS with all other
results (p2, ...pn) that MIGHT have been produced.
I said:
So I perceive contrast when I hear pin and
then bin and can tell that they are different?
You say:
Yes
Thank you. Then "contrast" refers to one possible value of a perceptual
variable, viz. the perceived relationship between two word perceptions.
This means that there is NO possibility of a perception of contrast when
you hear just ONE word; there is nothing to contrast it with. So when
you hear "pin" you hear NO contrast. That's all I've been trying to
say all along.
Best
Rick