creators_name: Oudeyer, Pierre-Yves editors_name: Hallam, B. Hallam, D. Floreano, J. Hallam, G. Hayes, J-A. Meyer type: confpaper datestamp: 2003-03-12 lastmod: 2011-03-11 08:55:07 metadata_visibility: show title: Phonemic Coding Might Result From Sensory-Motor Coupling Dynamics ispublished: pub subjects: comp-sci-lang subjects: comp-sci-mach-dynam-sys subjects: ling-comput subjects: comp-neuro-sci subjects: psy-ling subjects: comp-sci-neural-nets subjects: comp-sci-speech subjects: bio-theory subjects: neuro-ling subjects: comp-sci-art-intel subjects: ling-phono full_text_status: public keywords: speech, phonemic coding, particulate speech, agents, self-organisation, regularities, discreteness, digitalness shared sound system \sep production \sep perception abstract: Human sound systems are invariably phonemically coded. Furthermore, phoneme inventories follow very particular tendancies. To explain these phenomena, there existed so far three kinds of approaches : ``Chomskyan''/cognitive innatism, morpho-perceptual innatism and the more recent approach of ``language as a complex cultural system which adapts under the pressure of efficient communication''. The two first approaches are clearly not satisfying, while the third, even if much more convincing, makes a lot of speculative assumptions and did not really bring answers to the question of phonemic coding. We propose here a new hypothesis based on a low-level model of sensory-motor interactions. We show that certain very simple and non language-specific neural devices allow a population of agents to build signalling systems without any functional pressure. Moreover, these systems are phonemically coded. Using a realistic vowel articulatory synthesizer, we show that the inventories of vowels have striking similarities with human vowel systems. date: 2002 date_type: published publisher: MIT Press pagerange: 406-416 refereed: TRUE citation: Oudeyer, Pierre-Yves (2002) Phonemic Coding Might Result From Sensory-Motor Coupling Dynamics. [Conference Paper] document_url: http://cogprints.org/2658/1/sab02.pdf