ABSTRACT

Articulatory phonology aims to bridge the boundary between phonology and phonetics, amounting to eliminating the need for their interface. This is a drastic change and it begins with the following very different assumption from traditional phonology theories. That is, the two apparently different physical and cognitive domains of speech are simply the high-and low-dimensional descriptions of the same complex system. Crucial to this approach is identification of basic phonological units, not with the traditional, purely symbolic distinctive features. but with a new set of dynamically specified units of articulatory action, called articulatory gestures or vocal tract gestures. We begin the introduction of articulatory phonology below with a discussion on this essential notion of articulatory gesture.