Carmen Wolfe

November 5, 2002

Response to Ch. 6 (TLI)

A Unique Voice

For teenage drivers such as myself, cell phones can be a dangerous addition to a car. My parents quickly invested in a new Sprint phone that included voice recognition dialing as an accessory to aid in this dilemma. The device boasted the ability to automatically dial stored numbers at the mere mention of the person’s name. I found the function to be quite useful, yet disappointing in its accuracy and versatility. Similar names such as Staci and Lacey were often confused, and the phone would only dial in response to my own voice. Pinker alludes to these failures of the voice recognition software and explores the reasons behind them.

Rapid technological advancements have brought forth the problem associated with discriminating the individual sounds associated with certain words, syllables, and letters. Though we teach children to sound out words using the individual letters as a guide, most adults fail to divide normal speech into these elementary sections. Coarticulation supercedes these lessons and encourages the tongue to slur sounds together to the point where certain consonants and vowels are indistinguishable from one another. This characteristic inhibits the ability of voice recognition processors to distinguish between sounds and contributes to their ineffectiveness.

Once again, evidence emerges to emphasize the fact that the human mind cannot be encapsulated by a working model of molecules, electrical impulses, or mere technological circuitry. This very mystery motivates psychologists to continue to explore the human brain and to unearth its secrets. Much information is left to be known concerning its operation and behavior. As linguists strive to understand language, they ultimately turn to the human mind as the definitive processor of spoken, written, and unwritten language. Understanding its processes and functions will enable humans to improve communication and quality of life.