Current Research Outline

Background. A primary aim in generative linguistics is to discover the computational principles underlying our ability to speak. A specific problem occupying much of my work is how to relate the symbolic aspects of our speaking competence to their continuous physical manifestation in terms of vocal tract action. The study of these two aspects of speech has traditionally been pursued under separate domains, the symbolic aspects being the domain of phonology and the continuous aspects being the domain of phonetics. The problem of the phonology-phonetics relation is an instance of a fundamental problem in cognitive science, namely, the problem of relating the low dimensional, discrete aspects of cognition to the high dimensional, vastly detailed aspects of performance.