Essay: Phonetics and Phonology
Malak’s attempt at the first stage is bound to fail because Malak had used to gather the data about the phonemes only. And it is not sufficient to help her with speech recognition. Because knowledge of phonology which incorporates a specific combination of speech sounds in speech context, is “absent”. Moreover, The second scheme, which helps Malak in getting the lexical information, would also fail because it also does not incorporate entire phonological information like Stress patterns within words and its variation between words at the sentence level.
These are the phonemes that are part of the code: / m/, /aɪ/, /g/, /ɹ/, /æ/, /n/, /d/, /f/, /ɑ/, /ð/, /ə/, /v/, /l/, /t/, /p/, /n/, /k/, and /s/. But, how these phonemes would be brought together to formulate the utterance will be problematic. Since speech sound production is not the only aspect of language production. And it requires knowledge of lexical as well as phonological representation of those words too. Since lexical and phonological knowledge is absent. So, the data could not be used to effectively help in speech recognition.
i.e: How would these sounds combine to form the words like /maɪ gɹænd fɑðəɹ / cannot be combined together by using only phoneme data. Although using PRAT it could be done, still, phonological rules cannot be applied. Moreover, phonemes have many allophones too. Like /pənkaɪk/ will be pronounced as /p/ /pʰ/ and is pronounced as //pʰənkəɪk/
Moreover, in the production of that utterance, phonological rules like assimilation of speech sounds and deletion of speech sounds would also be a part of speech recognition. And, since phonological rules would not be incorporated within data, so results cannot be beneficial for theft.
e.g: / fɑðəɹ/ might be pronounce as /fɑðə/. Where /ɹ/ sounds can be deleted in certain accents. Similarly, /faɪv flaɪt/ might be pronounced as /faɪvlaɪt/ because of assimilation of speech features of /f/ into /v/ sound. Since the knowledge of phonological rules is absent. So, this cannot be sufficient to crack the code.
i.e.: In /ˈgreɪn ˌfɑ:ðə/ first syllable would need the primary stress, and the second syllable will receive the secondary stress. However, the stress pattern can only be noted when the utterance is produced within the same pattern of utterance. So, the data about stress patterns would be absent in the substitution method, which would lead to speech recognition being impossible.
Moreover, the lexical entry of “grand” as an adjective and as a part of a complex noun will also be phonologically different. As stress pattern becomes different. So, that information would also be inappropriate using substitution tests.
Moreover, words have a syllable structure: Like /greɪnd/ has a syllable structure of CCVCC. However, in the production of “grandfather,” the word is pronounced as
/ˈgreɪn ˌfɑ:ðə/. So, the Syllable structure of the first syllable becomes “CCVC”. So, syllable structures also go through a variation after phonological rules are applied. Thus, this method would also not be helpful for Malak in making voice match because of changes in syllable structures after phonological rules are applied.
In conclusion, at both stages, Malak’s attempts would fail because knowledge of phonetics and information about phonemes is not enough to make a match of speech recognition. Because speech patterns not only involve phonemes but also the combination of phonemes in certain patterns following certain phonological rules. The syllable structure and stress pattern can also not be judged using the substitution test, which was employed by Malak.