ABSTRACT
An interesting development in the study of speech is described in this chapter by Paccia-Cooper and Cooper. As we have noted, much of the current speech research, including that demonstrating higher order, top-down influences on phonetic perception, has been primarily directed toward achieving an understanding of the processes of perception and production at the phonetic level. Paccia-Cooper and Cooper (and see the final section of Chapter 6 by Grosjean and Lane) have, in marked contrast, studied a number of lower level acoustic phenomena, which are readily measurable, to infer the existence of higher order units or structures, as well as strategies, that speakers use in the planning and execution of speech. Thus, for example, by measuring the acoustic characteristics that are associated with phrase-final lengthening, Paccia-Cooper and Cooper were able to infer that the mental plans that underlie the production of speech make use of certain syntactic constituents, as opposed to others. This approach, like that of Grosjean and Lane, constitutes an important advance in our quest to develop performance-based models of language processing, in that it demonstrates how a relatively simple and direct means may be used for discovering the structural units and processing strategies involved in the production and perception of language.
