Linguistic categories and speech perception

If you adopt this view, then linguistic
categories are just like any other
category:
1. multimodal and distributed in many different parts of the brain
(auditory, visual, tactile, emotional…..)
2. context-sensitive (or relational) and therefore dynamic and labile
3. constructed by each individual from his or her own experience
4. constantly updated by new experience that fits into the category
(another influence on their lability)
5. can be thought of as hierarchically organised: smaller functional
groupings combine into higher-order ones:
– mouse—small furry mammals—larger furry mammals—
mammals—animals
– sound of [p] in syllable onset—syllable onset—syllable—foot (=
stress group)—intonational phrase