Citation

Munhall KG, Ostry DJ, Parush A. J. Exp. Psychol. Hum. Percept. Perform. 1985; 11(4): 457-474.

Copyright

(Copyright © 1985, American Psychological Association)

DOI

unavailable

PMID

3161986

Abstract

The control of individual speech gestures was investigated by examining laryngeal and tongue movements during vowel and consonant production. A number of linguistic manipulations known to alter the durational characteristics of speech (i.e., speech rate, lexical stress, and phonemic identity) were tested. In all cases a consistent pattern was observed in the kinematics of the laryngeal and tongue gestures. The ratio of maximum instantaneous velocity to movement amplitude, a kinematic index of mass-normalized stiffness, was found to increase systematically as movement duration decreased. Specifically, the ratio of maximum velocity to movement amplitude varied as a function of a parameter, C, times the reciprocal of movement duration. The conformity of the data to this relation indicates that durational change is accomplished by scalar adjustment of a base velocity form. These findings are consistent with the idea that kinematic change is produced by the specification of articulator stiffness.

Language: en