2025년 2월 20일, 한양대학교 음성·언어인지과학 연구소 주최로 University of Toronto의 Philip Monahan 선생님의 초청 콜로퀴엄이 열립니다.
On February 20, 2025, the Hanyang Institute for Phonetics and Cognitive Sciences of Language (HIPCS) will host an invited colloquium featuring Professor Philip Monahan from the University of Toronto.
Title: Coding phonetic and phonological features from classes in the brain: Using a novel mismatch negativity paradigm
Abstract: The nature of speech sound representations remains intensely debated. While generative theories have long postulated abstract phonological features, their psycholinguistic support is sparse and equivocal. In this talk, I present two experiments that aim to understand the neurophysiological representation of phonetic and phonological categories and classes. In the first experiment, I present the results of an electroencephalography (EEG) oddball MMN study that employs inter-category variation in the standards; results suggests that Mandarin Chinese listeners’ brains group rhotic consonants as a coherent class, consistent with an account that posits the feature [retroflex]. In the second experiment, using EEG to test English obstruent voicing and inter-category variation in the standards, I present MMN results that suggest that the brain disjunctively codes temporal and spectral phonetic cues into a single abstract phonological category (i.e., [spread glottis]); again, the time-frequency domain reveals that featural knowledge facilitates predicting upcoming stimuli. These results, taken together, suggest that abstract phonological features are not only supported by the brain but also help predict the incoming signal.