Speech production.

Abstract

This is a status report on three areas of speech production: (1) Functional properties of the speech production apparatus: the current state of knowledge of the respiratory, phonatory and articulatory systems is briefly discussed. (2) Control principles underlying speech production: the nature of the supposed invariance underlying segment production, theories of coarticulation, the relation between control units and linguistic units, peripheral neurophysiology and mechanics, and Action Theory. (3) The biological basis of the speech production process: discussion of whether discontinuity in vocal tract evolution is accompanied by discontinuity in linguistic evolution, presentation of evidence that babbling is an important precursor to early speech, and a discussion of interhemispheric and intrahemispheric localization of linguistic functions.