Aspects of the Control and Production of Speech

摘要

The dominant trend in phonetics today -- due to a large extent to Generative Phonology -- is to discover the brain mechanisms underlying the observed behavior in speech. Among other things there is interest in attempting to find out how motor programs are stored latently, selected, activated into muscular contractions, controlled, and tailored for optimum communication. The activity of some of the laryngeal muscles was sampled electromyographically in five subjects as they spoke sentences with a variety of intonation contours. It was found for all subjects that the laryngeal muscles participate actively in modulating pitch, in particular the cricothyroid and lateral cricoarytenoid muscles are active in raising pitch and the sternohyoid muscle in lowering pitch. The evidence did not support Lieberman's theory of intonation but re-affirmed the traditional view that the speaker can and does 'program' his larynx to execute any intonational pattern he desires. In addition, recent claims made about the perception of 'stress' by trained linguists were examined in the light of recent experimental findings. Some explanations are proposed for the perceptual origin of the multiple levels of stress in English. Arguments and evidence from jaw movements are presented demonstrating the possibility and likelihood of the use of rapid kinesthetic feedback in speech. Also two experiments are reported relevant to the question of how the gestures in speech are sequenced.