Towards an articulatory phonology

Abstract

We propose an approach to phonological representation based on describing an utterance as an organised pattern of overlapping articulatory gestures. Because movement is inherent in our definition of gestures, these gestural ‘constellations’ can account for both spatial and temporal properties of speech in a relatively simple way. At the same time, taken as phonological representations, such gestural analyses offer many of the same advantages provided by recent nonlinear phonological theories, and we give examples of how gestural analyses simplify the description of such ‘complex segments’ as /s/–stop clusters and prenasalised stops. Thus, gestural structures can be seen as providing a principled link between phonological and physical description.

On the timing and coordination of articulatory movements: Historical perspectives and current theoretical challenges

“…The term “articulatory gesture” has been used in many ways, but we will adopt the usage from the influential theory of Articulatory Phonology (Browman & Goldstein, 1989; Ohala, Browman, & Goldstein, 1986). Gestures are units of action that create constrictions in the vocal tract.…”

Modularizing speech

“…Recent advances in modeling speech biomechanics (e.g., Nazari et al, 2011; Stavness et al, 2012a,b) have enabled our group to begin identifying some of the biomechanical properties that we consider to be the hallmarks of speech production modules, most notably pervasive saturation effects that enable feed-forward control of speech structures (Gick et al, in press). At least some of these biomechanically optimized speech production modules correspond well with speech “gestures,” long described as movement-related primitives of speech (e.g., Browman and Goldstein, 1986). …”

Phonological reduction in the first part of noun compounds

“…A large amount of attention has been directed at this issue in the following decades. It is clear that in typical speech (without first priming the plural form), speakers rarely use either regular or irregular plural forms in the first part of a compound (BuckGengler, Menn, & Healy, 2004;Ramscar & Dye, 2010); but this fact does not by itself explain the observed differences between regular and irregular plurals. One position (e.g.…”

“…English speakers generally produce compounds with an uninflected first noun, even with nouns that have irregular plurals (e.g. Buck-Gengler, Menn, & Healy, 2004;Ramscar & Dye, 2010). It is thus uncontroversial (a) that singular/uninflected nouns must be available to speakers when producing compounds containing a noun that has an irregular plural, even when plurality might be semantically appropriate, and (b) that speakers use irregular plurals in the first part of a compound in only a small minority of tokens.…”