Communication between minds: The ultimate goal of speech communication and the target of research for the next half-century
Hiroya Fujisaki · The Journal of the Acoustical Society of America · 1998
Needless to say, speech is a manifestation of the information intended by the speaker and is perceived by the listener who tries to retrieve it. Elucidation of the entire process of speech communication thus requires a multidisciplinary approach, as was eminently illustrated by the work of Chiba and Kajiyama about a half-century ago [The Vowel, Its Nature and Structure, Tokyo-Kaiseikan (1941)]. Through the efforts of distinguished researchers, supported by the rapid progress in electronics and computers as well as in other means, the ensuing half-century has seen remarkable advances in our understanding of the linguistic, physiological, articulatory, acoustic, sensory, and cognitive processes in normal, developmental, and pathological cases, as well as in technologies for its utilization. As a new millenium of man–machine symbiosis is entered into, however, still deeper understanding becomes necessary in order to establish a friendly human–machine interface through spoken language, often in multimodal and multilingual environments. In the author’s view, this can only be achieved by investigating and modeling the mind itself as the ultimate source and destination of information. To that end, speech science will need closer cooperation with related disciplines such as brain science, cognitive science, and artificial intelligence.