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"I do think there is a link in that in both cases, writing fiction or writing a computer program, at any given moment you're focusing on a very specific and particular thing—one word, one line of code, whatever."
- Neal Stephenson
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| Sound Analysis | ||
| Improving language teaching by showing the waveform of a spoken word or phrase, and comparing it to standard speech. |
In the novella Gulf, the main characters of the story use a special language called Speedtalk, an artificial language that greatly improved the speed with which people could communicate with each other.
To help Joe learn to speak, Gail makes use of a special kind of analysis.
| Gail started teaching him to hear by speaking to him single words from the odd language, requiring him to repeat them back. "No, Joe. Watch." This time whenshe spoke the word it appeared on the screen in sound analysis, by a means basically like the one used to show the deaf-and-dumb their speech mistakes. "Now you try it."
He did, the two arrays hung side by side. "How's that, teacher?" he said triumphantly. "Terrible ... try again." She shifted the controls; he tried again. This time his analysis array was laid down on top of hers; where the two matched, they canceled. Where they did not match, his errors stood out in contrasting colors. |
| Technovelgy from Assignment in Eternity,
by Robert Heinlein. Published by Signet in 1953 Additional resources -
|
It's not clear exactly what appears as an "array", but it sounds like the waveform corresponding to the spoken word. Computer-based language teaching systems have appeared in the last 5-10 years that make use of personal computers to do exactly this. The student speaks the word or phrase into the microphone, and has a chance to compare his work with that of the teacher by comparing the two waveforms.
To the best of my knowledge, this method was never used to teach deaf people to speak. As far as I know, most of this teaching is done using anatomical references, and watching your own tongue and palate in a mirror, after watching the teacher.
(Thanks to Kate Gladstone for this one!)
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'The peculiar quality of this light, which gave it its great preeminence over all other penetrating rays...'
'The overworked leg motor would have to cool down before he could work on it...'
‘Where to, sport?’ the starter at cab relay asked.
This is nothing new for science fiction fans!
'Their only check on the growth and development of Vulcan 3 lay in two clues: the amount of rock thrown up to the surface... and the amount of the raw materials and tools and parts which the computer requested.'
'I guess there's nobody round this table who doesn't have a Crosswell [tapeworm] working for him in the small intestine.'
'Figments of his mind in one sense, of course, for he had shaped them...'
