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x1798DE | 1 year ago

Not OP, but as a native English speaker and former scientist (though not in this area), I would interpret "x does y on English tasks" to mean "we tested this in English and don't know if the effect generalizes to other languages".

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thaumasiotes|1 year ago

In this case we do know if the effect generalizes to other languages. It cannot fail to; the larynx, lips, tongue, and jaw are almost all there is. For example, vowels are conventionally defined by jaw position ("height"), tongue position ("frontness"), and lip configuration ("rounded" or not).

You might miss some things like creaky voice or ejectives, you'll probably miss aspiration, but all that does is give you a worst-case scenario analogous to a native speaker trying to understand someone with a foreign accent. Extremely high accuracy will be possible.

AlecSchueler|1 year ago

This is a reasonable hypothesis but if only English has been studied then it would be unscientific to extrapolate at this time.

tbenst|1 year ago

x1798DE captured my intent well. For example, tonal languages like Mandarin or Cantonese may be more difficult to decode if vocal cords aren’t vibrating, and languages with more phonemes that have both a voiced and unvoiced version might be more difficult. I still think decoding will be possible for general language, but that’s a hypothesis whereas I know it’s true for English.