Carlson, R. & Hawkins, S. (2007) When is fine phonetic detail a detail? In Trouvain, J. & Barry, W. (eds.), Proceedings of the 16th International Congress of Phonetic Sciences, p211-214. Paper ID 1721.
It is our task to take a discussant role in the special session “Sound to Sense: Modelling Fine Phonetic Detail” at ICPhS 2007. The contributions by Moore and Maier [12] and Lecumberri and Cooke [11] inspire further thinking on how fine phonetic details can be successfully explored by humans or by machines. The MINERVA2 system built on the multi-trace (episodic) memory model challenges current traditional probabilistic efforts in speech recognition by including a more human-like approach. The rationale for the comments in this paper is to illuminate and support the hypothesis that speech perception is a dynamic and adaptive perceptual process in the interpretation of acoustic cues or fine phonetic details. As background for the discussion of the two contributions two experiments are reviewed.
