Structure in mind, structure in vocal tract

Abstract

We update our understanding of the view that grammar regulates inter-segmental temporal coordination and present an extension of that view to a new domain: we argue that inter-segmental coordination is basic to prosody. It is the glue joining segments together differently in different languages (here, illustrated with examples from Arabic and Spanish) and orchestrates their unfolding in ways corresponding to constructs posited in theoretical analysis. The correspondence is one between organization in mind-brain and organization in vocal tract. Moreover, for both mind-brain and vocal tract, the organization is phonological and abstract. It is so because it holds over segments of various identities: in Arabic, the first segment in // is not prosodified as part of the same unit as // and this holds true also for //, // and so on, regardless of sonority. In contrast, in English or Spanish, a different organization holds. Crucially, uniformity in organization (same organization presiding over sequences with varying segmental makeup) does not imply uniqueness of phonetic exponents: prosodic organization is pleiotropic, simultaneously expressed by more than one phonetic exponent. Finally, two properties of coordination relations are underscored: lawful flexibility and abstractness. The first is revealed in the degrees of freedom with which movements corresponding to any given effector begin; the second in invariances of task-relevant kinematic signatures regardless of the effectors implicated in any given segmental sequence. Once again, abstract phonological structure is mirrored in vocal tracts via coordination relations holding across physiology and the particular modes of its operation.