Critique: Speech perception: Acoustic or articulatory?
Douglas D. O’Shaughnessy · The Journal of the Acoustical Society of America · 1996
In this review of John Ohala’s paper (‘‘Speech perception is hearing sounds, not tongues’’), we are sympathetic to his position that acoustic properties have largely driven the selection of sounds found in speech production. It is very reasonable that listeners need not refer to articulation during speech perception. However, like many human perception theories, it is difficult (if not impossible) to verify experimentally. The arguments Ohala uses to attack the articulatory theories of speech perception do not really disprove them; instead, they simply argue that an acoustically based theory is more plausible. When dealing with plausibility arguments, one must be careful to ponder the evidence for different positions. Thus this paper comments on the weight of Ohala’s arguments and notes whether any theory of the fundamental basis of speech perception can actually be proven or disproven. It also discusses speech perception from the communication point of view.