The Structure of Language

1. Information Conveyed by Speech 2. How Speech Fits in with the Overall Structure of Language

• TWO TOPICS

Information Conveyed by Speech

• Information Conveyed by Speech
•  Phonetic quality: The sequence of phonetic events (e.g., []) which will later be parsed into morphemes, words, phrases, sentences, etc. This is the initial entry point into the linguistic system. All other items on this list are nonlinguistic. 

Affective quality: The speech signal can convey a great deal of information about the emotional state and attitude of the speaker.

• Affective quality: The speech signal can convey a great deal of information about the emotional state and attitude of the speaker.
• Q: Can we go out for ice cream?
• A: No. [I’m sorry, but we can’t right now.]
• A: No. [NO! For the last time NO!]
• The two instances of ‘no’ have the same phonetic representations (), but convey very different affective information to listeners.

• Personal quality:
• Personal identity (i.e., who is talking): “Hi, it’s me.”
• Gender
• Age
• Health status, fatigue, other miscellaneous information
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• In this class we will be focusing mainly on the transmission of phonetic information, but we will talk some about how some kinds of personal information is conveyed.

• Layers of Linguistic Organization
• The phonetic content of a speech signal is the entry point into a complex and hierarchically organized language system.
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