ABSTRACT

According to articulatory phonology. a speech utterance is described as an abstract action that can be decomposed into a small number of primitive units of articulatory gestures in a particular spatio-temporal configuration. Since these gestures are defined on vocal tract subsystem constrictions, rather than on the articulators themselves, this phonological description of the utterance as an action is a low-dimensional description. Importantly, this same description also provides an intrinsic specification of the highdimensional properties of the action. which entail the various bio-mechanical consequences of the action as the physically measurable articulators' movements. This equivalence of descriptions in both the low-dimensional, phonological "task" space and in the high dimensional, phonetic "physical articulatory" space is accomplished via a nonlinear transformation. which we will later discuss, from the "task variables" to articulatory variables. A tight integration between phonology and phonetics stems from this equivalent description of the speech production actions in both phonological and phonetic spaces.