Speech

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Speech is the vocalization form of human communication. It is based upon the syntactic combination of lexicals and names that are drawn from very large (usually >10,000 different words) vocabularies. Each spoken word is created out of the phonetic combination of a limited set of vowel and consonant speech sound units. These vocabularies, the syntax which structures them, and their set of speech sound units, differ creating the existence of many thousands of different types of mutually unintelligible human languages. Human speakers are often polyglot able to communicate in two or more of them. The vocal abilities that enable humans to produce speech also provide humans with the ability to sing.

A gestural form of human communication exists for the deaf in the form of sign language. Speech in some cultures has become the basis of a written language, often one that differs in its vocabulary, syntax and phonetics from its associated spoken one, a situation called diglossia. Speech in addition to its use in communication, it is suggested by some psychologists such as Vygotsky is internally used by mental processes to enhance and organize cognition in the form of an interior monologue.

Speech is researched in terms of the speech production and speech perception of the sounds used in spoken language. Several academic disciplines study these including acoustics, psychology, speech pathology, linguistics, cognitive science, communication studies, otolaryngology and computer science. Another area of research is how the human brain in its different areas such as the Broca's area and Wernicke's area underlies speech.

It is controversial how far human speech is unique in that other animals also communicate with vocalizations. While none in the wild uses syntax nor compatibly large vocabularies, research upon the nonverbal abilities of language trained apes such as Washoe and Kanzi raises the possibility that they might have these capabilities.

The origins of speech are unknown and subject to much debate and speculation.

For more information about Speech, read the full article at Wikipedia.
This text uses material from Wikipedia and is available under the GNU Free Documentation License.


News tagged with speech

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Tactile input affects what we hear: study

Medicine & Health / Psychology & Psychiatry

created Nov 30, 2009 | popularity not rated yet | comments 0

Humans use their whole bodies, not just their ears, to understand speech, according to University of British Columbia linguistics research.


Measured -- The time it takes us to find the words we need

Medicine & Health / Psychology & Psychiatry

created Nov 23, 2009 | popularity 4.1 / 5 (7) | comments 1

(PhysOrg.com) -- The time it takes for our brains to search for and retrieve the word we want to say has been measured for the first time. The discovery is reported in a paper published in the Proceedings of the National Ac ...


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Google adds automatic captions to YouTube

Technology / Internet

created Nov 19, 2009 | popularity not rated yet | comments 0

Google, in a significant development for the deaf, announced on Thursday it was adding automatic caption capability to videos on YouTube.


Report Says Musicians Hear Better Than Non-Musicians

Report Says Musicians Hear Better Than Non-Musicians

Medicine & Health / Neuroscience

created Nov 17, 2009 | popularity 5 / 5 (1) | comments 0

(PhysOrg.com) -- The Journal of Neuroscience reports this week that musicians are better than non-musicians at recognizing speech in noisy environments.  The finding from a study conducted by neurobiologists at Nor ...


Researchers unlock the 'sound of learning' by linking sensory and motor systems

Researchers unlock the 'sound of learning' by linking sensory and motor systems

Medicine & Health / Psychology & Psychiatry

created Nov 02, 2009 | popularity 5 / 5 (2) | comments 0

Learning to talk also changes the way speech sounds are heard, according to a new study published in Proceedings of the National Academy of Sciences by scientists at Haskins Laboratories, a Yale-affiliated resear ...


Foreign subtitles improve speech perception

Medicine & Health / Psychology & Psychiatry

created Nov 11, 2009 | popularity 4.5 / 5 (2) | comments 2

Do you speak English as a second language well, but still have trouble understanding movies with unfamiliar accents, such as Brad Pitt's southern accent in Quentin Tarantino's Inglourious Basterds? In a new study, published ...


Google's voice search tool now understands Chinese

Google voice search learns Chinese

Technology / Internet

created Nov 02, 2009 | popularity 3 / 5 (2) | comments 0

Google's voice search tool now understands Chinese. The Internet giant announced on Monday that users of Nokia S60 series mobile phones could now search the Internet using voice commands in Mandarin Chinese.


UN demands removal of China poster at Net event

Technology / Internet

created Nov 16, 2009 | popularity not rated yet | comments 0

(AP) -- United Nations officials forced free-speech advocates to take down a poster over its reference to China's Web restrictions at an Internet conference focused on freedom, saying Monday that it violated a ban on posters ...