Neil P. McAngus Todd
Dept. of Music, Univ. of Sheffield, Sheffield S10 2TN, UK
Guy Brown
Univ. of Sheffield, Sheffield S10 2TN, UK
There is now considerable evidence that auditory processing involves two parallel pathways. The first, a phasic pathway, which specializes in temporal processing, involves a hierarchy of temporal periodicities ranging from pitch periods to rhythmic periods. The second is a tonal pathway, which specializes in the spectral processing. Here a computational model of the phasic process based on a multi-timescale decomposition of the output from a cochlear model is presented. This model determines (1) the locatation of the syllables of a speech signal, (2) the hierarchical grouping of the syllables, and (3) the stress of the syllables. In order to test this model its output was compared with that of conventional metrical phonology for a variety of utterances.