Speech Articulation Book

The Speech Articulation book provides a comprehensive introduction to the dynamics of speech articulation and speech acoustics. The advantage offered by this book is that authors may employ a variety of visual tools to portray the concepts being addressed. Included in Speech Articulation are more than 80 images, figures and 104 glossary entries of terms and definitions. As such, this book format is ideally suited for introductory courses in the disciplines of Communication Sciences and Disorders, Linguistics, and Vocal Music. Indeed, a careful understanding of the material in this book should provide readers with a conceptual framework for understanding the bases of normal and disordered speech production, linguistics, and the production of vocal music. Authored by Fred D. Minifie, Ph.D. 98 pages

• Speech Production: Simply stated, speech production involves the generation of more-or-less noisy sounds somewhere within the vocal tract and the selective modification of those sounds by the resonance characteristics of the vocal tract. Introductions to respiration and phonation during speech production are included in this section.

• Vowels: As we develop a description of how vowel sounds are produced, what makes vowels acoustically different from one another, and why they are different, this chapter will proceed along the lines of a source-filter theory of speech sound production.

• Consonant Sounds: Consonant sounds differ from vowels in that the vocal tract is relatively more constricted during consonant production and may be entirely occluded for short periods of time. During vowel production, the vocal tract is relatively open.
  • Semivowels - All semivowels are produced with vibration of the vocal folds and, hence, are voiced sounds. They are continuant sounds since there is no momentary stoppage of the air stream as in stops or affricates. They are called consonants because there is a greater degree of vocal tract constriction than for vowel elements. They are called semivowels because the constriction is not as great as that for other consonant elements. They could as validly be called semi-consonants. Four semivowels are non-nasalized; three semivowels are nasalized.

  • Fricatives - Many consonant sounds may be described as voiced or voiceless. Those sounds produced with vocal fold vibration are called voiced sounds. Thus, the sound source is at the larynx. Sounds with no vocal fold vibration are termed voiceless. Vocal tract constrictions for production of voiceless fricative sounds may be at the vocal folds, as in /h/, or elsewhere within the vocal tract. Voiced fricatives have two places of constriction: voicing at the vocal folds, and turbulence at a constriction farther out in the vocal tract.

  • Stops and Affricates - Stops: Some consonant sounds are produced with the vocal tract entirely occluded. When both the oral and nasal cavities are occluded, stop sounds are produced. Affricatives: Two consonant sounds in English are produced with an occlusion of the vocal tract, which, upon release, is immediately followed by a sustained turbulent sound. These sounds are produced in such a way as to combine the elements of a stop sound with the elements of a fricative. These sounds, called affricates, are produced with the major vocal tract constriction at the posterior border of the alveolar ridge