本文对语音中元音和辅音的听觉感知研究进行综述。80多年前基于无意义音节的权威实验结果表明辅音对人的听感知更为重要,由于实验者在学术上的成就和权威性,这一结论成为了常识,直到近20年前基于自然语句的实验挑战了这个结论并引发了新一轮的研究。本文主要围绕元音和辅音对语音感知的相对重要性、元音和辅音的稳态信息和边界动态信息对语音感知的影响以及相关研究的潜在应用等进行较为系统的介绍,最后给出了总结与展望。
This paper reviews the recent advances of speech perception research on relative importance of vowels and consonants in speech utterances. Almost 80 years ago, experiments conducted on meaningless syllables by a highly respected speech authority indicated that consonant was more important. This conclusion is widely accepted as common sense during the years after. In mid 1990s, a new experiment on continuous speech challenged this conclusion and thus incurred a new round of research on this subject. The main attention is paid to the relative importance of vowels and consonants in speech perception, the perception of steady-state acoustic cues and the transition cues at the vowel-consonant boundary, and the potential applications of their related research. The short conclusion and prospect are described.