This chapter focuses on one of the first steps in comprehending spoken language: How do listeners extract the most fundamental linguistic elements—consonants and vowels, or the distinctive features which compose them—from the acoustic signal? We begin by describing three major theoretical perspectives on the perception of speech. Then we review several lines of research that are relevant to distinguishing these perspectives. The research topics surveyed include categorical perception, phonetic context effects, learning of speech and related nonspeech categories, and the relation between speech perception and production. Finally, we describe challenges facing each of the major theoretical perspectives on speech perception.

Speech perception is remarkably robust. This paper examines how acoustic and auditory properties of vowels and consonants help to ensure intelligibility. First, the source–filter theory of speech production is briefly described, and the relationship between vocal-tract properties and formant patterns is demonstrated for some commonly occurring vowels. Next, two accounts of the structure of preferred sound inventories, quantal theory and dispersion theory, are described and some of their limitations are noted. Finally, it is suggested that certain aspects of quantal and dispersion theories can be unified in a principled way so as to achieve reasonable predictive accuracy.

The work published in Phonology and Phonetic Evidence presents an integrated phonetics-phonology approach in what has become an established field, laboratory phonology. This 1995 volume is divided into three sections. Part I deals with the status and role of features in phonological representations; Part II, on prosody, contains, amongst others, two papers which present for the first time detailed acoustic and perceptual evidence on the rhythm rule; and Part III, on articulatory organisation, includes several papers which from different perspectives test hypotheses derived from articulatory phonology, thereby testifying to the great influence this theory has exerted in recent years. This, the fourth in the series of Papers in Laboratory Phonology, will be welcomed by all those interested in phonetics, phonology and their interface.

Traunmüller (1981) suggested that the tonotopic distance between the first formant (F ₁) and the fundamental frequency (F ₀) is a major determinant of perceived vowel height. In the present study, subjects identified a vowel-height continuum ranging in formant pattern from /?/ to /ε/, at fiveF ₀ values. IncreasingF ₀ led to an increased probability of /I/ responses (i.e., the phoneme boundary shifted toward the /ε/ end of the continuum). Various conditions of filtering out the lower harmonics of the stimuli caused only marginal shifts of the phoneme boundary. The experiments provide evidence against interpretations of Traunmüller’s (1981) results that claim that vowel height is determined by the distance betweenF ₁ and the lowest harmonic that is present in the basilar membrane excitation pattern.