PHONETIC CATEGORIZATION

In phonetic categorisation, listeners hear a range of speech sounds fo rming a continuum of ambiguous sounds between two unambiguous endpoint s (e.g. a voicing continuum between [b] and [p]). Listeners are requir ed to identify the sounds as one or other of the two endpoints. The ta sk has been used widely in phonetics and psycholinguistics to study, f or example, categorical perception, selective adaptation, speaking rat e normalisation and trading relations. Influences of the lexical statu s of the endpoints, of word frequency, of sentential context and of ph onotactic permissibility have been explored by placing continua in dif ferent contexts. Phonetic categorisation has therefore been used in th e study of many aspects of speech recognition. A broad selection of re ferences (including several reviews) is given, and the task's many use s and its strengths and weaknesses are summarised.