Experimental Approaches To Phonology---Chapter 1: Methods in Phonology.

In part I, they delineate various theoretical considerations and provide background concerning the application of methods from other sciences.
Chapter 1: Methods in Phonology
John J. Ohala examines the significance of methods in scientific research and in advancing phonological theories, and explores methods as a means of change within a discipline.

Broadly speaking, a scientific discipline can be characterized by:
---the questions it asks;
---the answers given to the questions, that is, hypotheses or theories;
---the methods used to marshal evidence in support of the theories.

The above discipline applies to phonology:
(1)Questions─
1.1 How is language and its parts represented in the mind of
the speaker; how is this representation accessed and used? How can
we account for the variation in the phonetic shape of these elements as
a function of context and speaking style?

1.2 How, physically and physiologically, does speech work─the phonetic mechanisms of speech production and perception, including the structures and units it is built on?
***Q: What is speech perception?(The answer is quoted from wikipedia.)
***A: Speech perception refers to the processes by which humans are able to interpret and understand the sounds used in language. The study of speech perception is closely linked to the fields of phonetics and phonology in linguistics and cognitive psychology and perception in psychology. Research in speech perception seeks to understand how human listeners recognize speech sounds and use this information to understand spoken language. Speech research has applications in building computer systems that can recognize speech, as well as improving speech recognition for hearing- and language-impaired listeners.

1.3 How and why does pronunciation change over time, thus giving rise to different dialects and languages, and different forms of the same word or morpheme in different contexts? How can we account for common patterns in diverse languages, such as segment inventories and phonotactics?
***Q: What is phonotactics? (The answer is quoted from wikipedia.)
***A: Phonotactics is a branch of phonology that deals with restrictions in a language on the permissible combinations of phonemes. Phonotactics defines permissible syllable structure, consonant clusters, and vowel sequences by means of phonotactical constraints.
Phonotactic constraints are language specific. For example, in Japanese, consonant clusters like /st/ are not allowed, although they are in English. Similarly, the sounds /kn/ and /ɡn/ are not permitted at the beginning of a word in Modern English but are in German and Dutch, and were permitted in Old and Middle English.
Syllables have the following internal segmental structure:
‧Onset (optional)
‧Rime (obligatory, comprises Nucleus and Coda): Nucleus (obligatory);Coda (optional)
Both onset and coda may be empty, forming a vowel-only syllable, or alternatively, the nucleus can be occupied by a syllabic consonant.

1.4 How can we ameliorate communication disorders?
***Q: What is communication disorders? (The answer is quoted from wikipedia.)
***A: A communication disorder - speech and language disorders which refer to problems in communication and in related areas such as oral motor function. The delays and disorders can range from simple sound substitution to the inability to understand or use language.
Examples of communication disorders:
‧Autism(自閉症)--A developmental defect that affects understanding of emotional communication.
‧Aphasia(失語症)--Loss of the ability to produce or comprehend language.
‧Learning disability--Both speaking and listening components of the definition.
‧Dysnomia--Deficit involving word retrieval.
‧Asperger Syndrome--Areas of social and pragmatic language.
‧Semantic Pragmatic Disorder--Challenges with the semantic and pragmatic aspects of language.
‧Blindness--A defect of the eye or visual system.
‧Deafness--A defect of the ear or auditory system.
‧Dyslexia(誦讀困難)--A defect of the systems used in reading.
‧Dyscalculia--A defect of the systems used in communicating numbers.
‧Expressive language disorder--Affects speaking and understanding where there is no delay in non-verbal intelligence.
‧Mixed receptive-expressive language disorder--Affects speaking, understanding, reading and writing where there is no delay in non-verbal intelligence.
‧Speech disorders such as cluttering(組織凌亂), stuttering(結巴), oesophageal voice, speech sound disorder, specific language impairment, dysarthria.

1.5 How can the fuctions of speech be enhanced and amplified?

1.6 How is speech acquired as a first language and as a subsequent language?

1.7 How is sound associated with meaning?

1.8 How did language and speech arise or evolve in our species? Why is the vocal apparatus different as a function of the age and sex of the speaker? What is the relation between human speech and non-human communication?

As soon as any question receives an answer at one level, more detailed questions arise no matter how good an answer is provided at any given level.

(2) Theories─
2.1 There has been an abundance of theories regarding the psychological representation of sound patterns in language and the operations performed on them.
2.2 There have been many theories concerning the mechanisms of sound change.
‧Involve teleological elements: some suggest that sound change represented a
continual competition between the goals of making speech easier to produce and making it easier to perceive.
‧ Eliminate a teleological element: other emphasize the role played by listeners’ misperception or misparsings of the speech signal.

(3) Methods─
3.1 It is the methods employed by scientific discipplines─especially those that are experimental or fundamentally empirical─that constitute the principal engine for refinement and productive change in a discipline, helping to moderate the pace with which one theory supplants another. Methods tend to accumulate in a discipline. Occasionally the development of new methods can revolutionize a discipline.

3.2 Three key elements of what has been called the "scientific method" are:
First, to present data in an objective way. With minimal or no influence from the act of observing, especially that from the observer will help to insulate the data from the biases and beliefs of those who espouse the theories.
Second, data presented quantitatively, that is numerically. Data presented in a quantified way will avoid ambiguity; it is more precise, less likely to be misinterpreted. Moreover, it is optimal if the hypothesis or theory or model being tested is also expressed quantitatively.
Third, to present evidence that overcomes doubt as to its relevance to a particular hypothesis or theory.

(4) A “methodological revolution” has occurred within phonology:
4.1 The emergence of linguistic phonetics (Ladefoged 1971) and experimental phonology (J. Ohala and Jaeger 1986).
4.2 The Laboratory Phonology conferences (Kingston and Beckman 1990).
4.3 The greater incidence of papers at professional conferences where phonetic and psycholinguistic evidence is given in support of phonological theories at many meetings.
4.4 Several volumes or series of volumes.
4.5 An increase in the number of experimental and large corpus-based phonology papers in scholarly journals.