272 Linguistic Phonetics

Ladefoged, Peter: A Course in Phonetics, Third Edition. Fort Worth: Harcourt Brace College Publishers, pp. 272 - 275.

The Specification of Articulatory Gestures

All speech is the product of motor behavior muscular movements of the vocal organs. We could therefore describe aspects of speech such as pitch changes or different articulations in terms of the muscular movements involved. But this is usually not appropriate if we are trying to give a phonetic description of the sounds of a language. A phonetic description specifies the parameters speakers are trying to control, rather than the means that is used to effect this control. We can see the importance of this point when we consider more detailed aspects of speech production. Many sounds can be made in more than one way. Thus pitch changes, as we have seen, can be produced either by extra respiratory effort pushing the air out of the lungs more rapidly, or by increasing the tension of the vocal cords in one of a variety of ways, or by a combination of these techniques. I have recorded some speakers who produce the rising intonation at the end of tag questions (sentences such as "That's your book, isn't it?") mainly by extra respiratory effort, and others (the majority of speakers) who produce it mainly by increasing the tension of the vocal cords. Until I made these instrumental recordings, I could not tell the difference between these two groups of speakers. They all sounded very much alike. An appropriate phonetic description of these utterances would show no differences. When the same sound can be produced by different actions, we can say that there is phonetic motor equivalence between these actions. It does not matter to the listener which of the equivalent motor actions is used when producing a given sound. Accordingly, it is also irrelevant to the description of speech from a linguistic point of view. When we are concerned with just the meaningful aspects of utterances, we want to characterize simply those things that speakers control, and to which listeners attend. Consequently, we describe tone and intonation in terms of variations in pitch, not in terms of actions of the larynx and the respiratory mechanisms. The notion of phonetic motor equivalence can be further exemplified by reference to other material previously discussed. I deliberately gave a

The Specification of Articulatory Gestures 273 vague definition of what constitutes a stressed syllable (one "pronounced with a greater amount of energy than an unstressed syllable") because there are several ways of achieving this end. Not all of these sound exactly the same, so they are not strict examples of motor equivalence. But a number of them do produce precisely the same acoustic effect. This is because there are several different ways of producing greater respiratory energy. To take two examples, we can contract the muscles of the rib cage (the internal intercostals), or we can push against the diaphragm harder with the abdominal muscles (rectus abdominis and others). Either of these actions will produce an increase in the pressure of the air in the lungs, and either will produce a stressed syllable. Again, we may note that the precise action used is irrelevant to the phonetic specification, which is concerned with a different level of description. The particular muscular movements involved may be important to the speech pathologist or teacher of speech who is trying to alter the speaker's behavior. But, as we have noted, phonetic descriptions specify the controlling parameters of speech, rather than the underlying muscular mechanisms. Putting this another way, we can explain the phenomenon of motor equivalence in terms of what are called coordinative structures physiological systems that act together to produce the required effects. Thus we can think of the variations in subglottal pressure that occur during an utterance as the product of a coordinative structure consisting of the lungs, the sensory systems that supply the brain with information about the state of the lungs (for example, whether they are expanded or whether they have very little air in them), the muscles involved in adjusting the positions of the rib cage and the diaphragm, and the central processes relating all these. The subglottal pressure that can be produced at any given moment is constrained by this coordinative structure. We may call the relation between the subglottal pressure and the coordinative structure an equation of constraint. There are different equations of constraint describing all the controllable aspects of speech production. For example, the control of the tension of the vocal cords depends on a complex coordinative structure involving the laryngeal muscles, sensory information an the positions of the cricoid, thyroid, and arytenoid cartilages, and other factors. The control of the position of the lower lip depends on a coordinative structure involving the lip muscles and the muscles fixing the position of the lower jaw, and an information on the state of these and other factors, including the movements of the upper lip. In this view, when you want to say something, you simply set the goals for the actions of the vocal organs, and let the constraining equations determine how the coordinative structures will make the required movements. For further simple examples of coordinative structures, we will consider the production of vowels. As you can see quite easily for yourself, it is possible to produce the same vowel with many different jaw positions. Try to say [i] with your teeth almost together, and then with them fairly far

274 Linguistic Phonetics apart. There need be very little, if any, difference in the sounds you produce. The same is true of many other vowels. In fact, it is possible to produce a complete set of English vowels with your teeth almost together or with them held apart by a wedge such as a small coin. Obviously, the motor activity must be very different in these two circumstances. When the teeth are held far apart, you can feel the muscles of the tongue raising it up in the jaw when you say [h]. When the teeth are close together, the raising of the jaw itself contributes greatly to the lifting of the tongue for [h]. You can also observe the results of the motor equivalence of different gestures in making vowels by watching different people say the words "heed, hid, head, had." You will probably be able to see that some people lower the tongue by lowering the jaw as they say this series of words. But others keep the jaw comparatively steady and simply lower the tongue within the jaw. Motor equivalence nearly always involves parts of the speech mechanism being considered in more detail than is necessary for the description of differences in meaning. In each of the cases we have been considering, it has been possible to characterize the sounds in a unique way in physiological or articulatory terms. Thus if two sounds have the same pitch, they have the same rate of vibration of the vocal cords, irrespective of the mechanism used to produce the vocal cord vibrations. Similarly, the different ways of producing stressed syllables that we were discussing will all result in the same increases in subglottal pressure. Lastly, the different jaw position in vowels will not affect the position of the highest point of the tongue or its shape relative to the upper surface of the vocal tract. In the case of these vowels, it is not true to say that there are different articulations; it is only that there are different gestures producing the same articulation. In general, if two vowels sound alike, they have the same shape of the vocal tract. There are only a few cases in which it has been shown that a person can produce the same sound with different vocal tract shapes. When this occurs, the coordinative structures permit what we may call compensatory articulations. The first case is in producing r-colored vowels, which, as we saw in Chapter 4, can be made with the tip of the tongue up or with a more bunched tongue position farther back in the mouth. Another case involves rounded vowels that can be made either with a small amount of rounding and lowering the larynx or with a large amount of lip rounding and the larynx in a more raised position. Try saying the vowel [u] with a more lowered larynx than usual. Now say it with a normal larynx position, and note the difference in sound. If you could make a spectrogram of these two sounds, you would find the frequencies of all the formants are lower when the larynx is lower. Now try saying [u] with a normal larynx position and then increasing the lip rounding. This will also lower the formant frequencies, so that it is possible to make a sound identical with the first [u] (the one with a lowered larynx). For high back vowels, lip rounding and lowering the larynx are compensatory articulations, each having the same acoustic effect.

The International Phonetic Alphabet 275 In Chapter 5, when we were considering the perception of stress, I mentioned the motor theory of speech perception-the notion that listeners perceive some aspect of an utterance by reference to their own motor activities. The concepts presented above are in some ways the converse of the motor theory. They are more like an auditory theory of speech production, in that they point out that speakers produce utterances sometimes in one way and sometimes in another, but always with reference to what they hear, and what utterances sound like. Speakers are goal oriented. They vary their vocal gestures and do whatever they have to do to get the sounds produced. These notions about how speakers make the vocal gestures required for an utterance do not restrict us to describing speech in terms of segments. Although I have been exemplifying the discussion by reference to particular segments such as vowels, the theory does not require us to think of a target corresponding to a segment, in the way discussed in the section on coarticulation. The notion of segmental targets is a good way of accounting for data such as the fronting of [k] before [i]; but it may not be the most appropriate way of looking at the production of speech. Speakers do not organize the movements of their articulators in terms of segmental targets. Instead, the movements that are required for an utterance are planned in terms of larger units such as syllables or words. In addition, the plan for an utterance is not simply a list of the targets that are required. The control system also specifies the timing information necessary for producing the utterance. This is a problem which is still not very well understood. There is a great deal of exciting research in phonetics still to be done.