Imitation and the Emergence of Segments

Abstract

Abstract The paper argues that the discrete phonetic segments on which language is raised are subjective gestural structures that emerge ontogenetically (and perhaps emerged evolutionarily) from the process of imitating a quasi-continuous acoustic signal with a neuroanatomically segmented and somatotopically organized vocal machinery. Evidence cited for somatotopic organization includes the perceptual salience in the speech signal of information specifying place of articulation, as revealed both by sine wave speech and by the pattern of errors in children’s early words.Copyright © 2000 S. Karger AG, Basel‘Almost every insight gained by modern linguistics, from Grimm’s Law to Jakobson’s distinctive features, depends crucially on the assumption that speech is a sequence of discrete entities.’Morris Halle [1964, p. 325]