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TY - GEN ID - cogprints2658 UR - http://cogprints.org/2658/ A1 - Oudeyer, Pierre-Yves Y1 - 2002/// N2 - 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. PB - MIT Press KW - speech KW - phonemic coding KW - particulate speech KW - agents KW - self-organisation KW - regularities KW - discreteness KW - digitalness shared sound system \sep production \sep perception TI - Phonemic Coding Might Result From Sensory-Motor Coupling Dynamics SP - 406 AV - public EP - 416 ER -