Language is magic - Will Styler

<img class="big" src="ling_memes/notcrazy.png"> 
---

# Language is Magic
### Virtual Triton Day 2020 - Will Styler

---

### My goal today is to convince you that speech is magic

- There are many elements of language

- They're all magic

- Not all languages are spoken

- ... but we're going to focus on speech

---

## The Plan

- Talking is impossibly hard

- Understanding speech is impossibly hard

---

# Speech Production is impossibly hard

---

### Speech is flapping bits of meat around in your head and throat while you expel air.

* Let's look a little closer at the details

---

---

### We break the types of meat-flapping into two categories

* "Consonants"

* "Vowels"

---

## Consonants

Producing obstructions in the mouth and throat in very specific patterns and places

* *We describe consonants by thinking about three things...*

* Voicing
	* Manner
	* Place

---

### Voicing

Is our larynx buzzing or not?

![](phonmedia/larynx_glottis.jpg)

---

### Voicing

Is our larynx buzzing or not?

---

### Voicing, Continued

* Sad, Zap, Dad, Pop, Dash, Garage

---

### Manner

* What exactly are your tongue and other articulators doing?

* Tad, Sad, Mad, Lad

---

### Place

* Where's your tongue in the mouth while doing that?

---

---

### Place, Continued

* Pin, Tin, Kin

* Fin, Sin, Shin

---

### Now let's think about sounds we already make...

* /g/ as in "go"
* /v/ as in "Victor"
* /n/ as in "nice"
* /w/ as in "weird"
* /r/ as in "rip"

* Yes, there are two completely different ways to make the English "R"

- Technically, there are around 13...

---

## What about vowels?

---

### Vowels are different.

* You hold your tongue in a certain position to create a certain resonance

* Let's try it!

* This means there are infinitely many possible vowels

* ... and every vowel you make is probably a bit different.

---

### Our vowel system is hardcore

* Arabic has three vowels (/i, a, u/)

* A majority of languages have five (/i, e, a, o, u/)

* My dialect of English has 16.

---

---

### English vowels

* / i, ɪ, e, ɛ, æ, ə, ʌ, ɑ, ɔ, ʊ, u /

* /aj, oj, ej, ow, aw/

* Few languages have us beat in terms of number of vowels

* (Rub it in, Danish)

---

### Speech is a series of vowels and consonants

* So when you put all of this fancy articulation together...

---

<br>
<tiny>From University of Michigan Phonetics Lab</tiny>

---

### So, making speech is amazingly complex

- ... and you don't care

---

![](img/magic.jpg)

---

# Luckily, understanding speech is easy, right?

- Right?!?

---

# Wrong.

---

# Speech Perception is magic, too

---

Speech is flapping bits of meat around in your head and throat while you expel air.

* **Speech perception is turning the resulting vibrations in the air back into language**

---

### So, what do these vibrations look like?

---

---

### How do humans pick them up?

---

---

![](img/magic.jpg)

---

### "Oh, he's talking about that thing up there!"

---

"Wait.  You can't do that.  You skipped a step.  Go back."

* **That step takes 2 years of grad school to understand how little we understand.**

---

## We are weirdly good at hearing speech

---

### Vowels are very *gradient*

- There are many possible gestures to make a vowel

- There are many positions between the tongue position for 'date' and 'debt'

- So, we should feel a very smooth progression between them?

- Right?
    
---

### Date vs. Debt

---

# Date

---

# Debt

---

## ?

---

## ??

---

## ???

---

### Let's do an experiment!

---

## ????
<audio controls>
<source src="phonmedia/date_debt_11_steps.mp3" type="audio/mp3">
</audio>

---

### Categorical Perception

* We use our knowledge of the categories to make strong decisions about which sounds are which

- Even when it's completely gradient!

---

### We are *really* good at hearing human speech

---

### Let's listen to some sounds

---
### Let's listen to some sounds

<br>

### Now let's play all three at once!

---

### Let's listen to some sounds

<br>

### Now let's play all three at once!

<br>

### Does this help?

---

### Sine Wave Speech

- Recodes complex speech signals as the sum of three moving sine waves

- Sine Wave Speech demonstrates how good we are at recovering speech in the world

---

### So, Speech perception?

- ![](img/magic.jpg)

---

"The Large Hadron Collider is the most complex endeavor humans have ever undertaken."

---

---

### **Speech** is the most complex endeavor humans have ever undertaken.

- ... and speech is just a small part of the complexity of human language

---

### In Summary...

---

# Language is Magic

- ... and that makes you all wizards

---

---

<huge>Thank you!</huge>

Questions? <wstyler@ucsd.edu>

<!-- Language is Magic

This short talk will introduce participants to the amazing complexity of elements of speech and speech perception, all in an effort to demonstrate clearly that speaking and hearing language is among the most complicated things humans do, and thus, that Language is basically magic.

-->