Speech as Audible Gestures

Speech can be described as audible movements. By varying the positions and trajectories of the lips, the jaw, the tongue, the velum, and the glottis, a speaker creates variations in air pressure and airflow in the vocal tract. These variations in pressure and flow produce the acoustic signal that we hear when listening to speech. For this acoustic signal to be not only audible, but also structured in such a way that it can transmit linguistic information, the articulators have to be controlled and coordinated so that the acoustic variations in the produced signal conform to the phonetics and phonology of the language being spoken. This paper examines several aspects of the control and coordination of articulatory gestures during speech, with particular emphasis on gestural patterning, gestural coherence, and gestural aggregation