[From Rick Marken (931025.1500)]
Bruce Nevin (Tue 931026 15:28:56 EDT) --
I am trying to understand your model of perception. Sentences like
the following are quite unclear to me:
The phonemic contrasts that a speaker and hearer of English perceives
partition the space. That is, the speaker/hearer partitions the space.
The first sentence suggests (to me) that a charateristic of the sound
input, called a "contrast", determines the percept. The second sentence
suggests that something about the person does it. I find this very
frustrating because I really am trying to understand your points. But
I'm a very concrete kindda guy -- I understand best when things are
described in terms of concrete mechanisms. What I'm trying to figure out
is what you think of as the mechanism that produces one "discrete"
perception (like the word "spin") from many different inputs.
Or do you seriously believe that I am proposing that contrasts are
socially instituted control systems that control the speakers of
languages?
That's really what it sounded like to me.
I thought my bona fides here were better established than that.
This is not about "loyalty" to PCT. I'm really trying to understand
your model of perception. My guess is that you don't have one. That's
certainly OK. I would just prefer that you understand that you don't.
My impression is that you are (perhaps unwittingly) trying to make
linguistic descriptions of phenomena (like "contrasts") substitute for
mechanistic models of perception. You don't need to do that.
If I were to visit you and say "your home is very welcoming--thank you!"
I would not expect you to reply "How can a home (whatever that is) do
anything, let alone welcome somebody?
But I would say that -- IF I were expecting you to give me an
explanation of your perception of feeling welcomed.
Do you want me to go away and stop disturbing you, Rick? I can offer
you a real easy solution to that problem.
I react strongly because you are disturbing my sense of what constitutes
an explanation of a phenomenon -- specifically, the phenomenon of
word perception. I have a reference for experiencing explanations as
models -- concrete models. Anyway, you're not disturbing "me" -- it's
a perception that's being disturbed. I figure, both of us will eventually
reorganize and the conflict will become irrelevant.
A better analogy to visual perception might involve the gestures of, say,
classical Indian dance, or mudra.
I agree with you completely here; this is a MUCH better analogy to
what goes on in word perception. A particular gesture (event) is
seen despite slight variations in the sensations, configurations,
transitions, etc that make it up; just the same as with words.
I am not attached to using the word contrast. What I am defending is the
fact that phonemes are controlled relative to one another and not
absolutely, the way a perception of "rectangle" is controlled. That is,
the reference values of acoustic or kinesthetic perceptions for phonemes
are controlled, at a higher level, for their separation from one another.
Bill and I have already pointed out why such a model would be
unfeasible. But if you want to diagram your model we could try to
take a look at it again to see if it might work -- and how we might
test to see if it is a good model. We have already described what I
think is a plausible alternatives to this "contrast" model based on
the PCT approach to designing perceptual functions.
If you don't want to call that contrast, fine, I'll give up the word.
Furthermore, I have no doubt that the same kind of control turns up other
than in speech.
A good candidate would be indian dance, I presume, where the components
of gestures that distinguish one from another would be equivalent
to the "contrasts" of speech.
Any system of elements established by social convention is a likely
candidate. But where perceptual control does not involve
conventionalized norms for social cooperation, as in your example of
recognizing the same book as you turn it around, it is not analogous to
perception of phonemes and words.
I disagree strongly here. It's not social convention that is the common
thread in this discussion of perception -- it is many-to-one mapping;
categorization. What you see happening with words and indian dance
gestures is what's happening with configurations (book shapes) and
Old MacDonald programs (brilliant post, by the way, Bill): the same
perceptual experience is the result of many different "exemplars". You
hear "spin" as one particular event even when it is pronounced by
different people, in different accents, in different contexts -- many
exemplars map to the same perception. You see the rectangular shape of a
book even when the book is rotated in pitch, roll and yaw -- many
(retinal shape) exemplars map to one perception. You hear the same
program (song) despite changes in elements and sequences -- many
exemplars map to the same perception.
You may think that speech (and indian dance) are special because the
one perception that results from the many exemplars is "discrete"; but
how do you know it is discrete? Can you perceive its discreteness?
Can you perceive "spin" as high in "discreteness" and "rectanglar shape"
as low in discreteness? I think you imagine that words are discrete
simply because they "seem so"; maybe because they can be written with
a discrete set of letters -- "spin". But, if you looked carefully,
I think you will see that ALL of your perceptions have this character.
The perception of the "retangularity" of a book is just as discrete as
the perception of "spin" or the program of "Old MacDonald".The book, for
example, always looks "rectangular" until it changes "discretely" to a
different shape when it is cut into another shape. Old MacDonald is
always "Old Macdonald" until you switch to "John Jacob Jingleheimer Smith".
De da de da de da da
Rick