Speech Perception

This course is a graduate seminar which explores, through research articles, how speech, produced by multiple articulatory actions, is perceived in the communication process. The reading material highlights the interface between speech production, perception, and cognition, with a focus on the complexity of speech motor systems and their language-specific coupling to auditory goals. Among the topics covered, we will review the main theories of speech perception, the models proposed for cross-language (L1-L2) speech perception, and the perception of speech by new-borns acquiring their native language.

On successful completion of this course, students should be able to: 

• Learning about different theoretical currents in speech perception
• Improving students’ knowledge of the tools used to set up speech perception experiments
• Guiding students in developing research questions (that may be pursued in M2 theses)
• By the end of the course, students are expected to develop their own perspectives on the variability observed in speech production and perception in different languages, and to understand the relevance of these perspectives for experimental design and data analysis in specific languages they are interested in.

Phonetics and phonology