The organization of articulator gestures: A comparison of Swedish, Bulgarian and Greenlandic.

This paper reports speech articulator gestures in Swedish, Bulgarian, and Greenlandic to study universal and language-specific components in articulation. This work is based on analysis of movements of individual articulators from x-ray motion films of speech, and continues from previous reports from this study by Wood [J. Phon. 7, 25–43 (1979); 19, 281–292 (1991); Proc. 3rd Conf. I.C.P.L.A., 191–200, Helsinki (1994); Proc. 13th I.C.Ph.S. Vol. 1, 392–395, Stockholm (1995); J. Phon. 24, 139–164 (1996); Proc. 4th Speech Prod. Sem., 61–64, Grenoble (1996); Speech Commun., (in press)], and by Wood and Pettersson [Folia Ling. 22, 239–262 (1988)]. Common principles concerned utilization and integration of articulator gestures (articulator gestures executed in approach, hold, and withdrawal phases, four tongue body gestures used, all gestures available for vowels and consonants, gesture conflicts resolved by gesture queuing, coarticulation and assimilations implemented by coproduction). Language-specific principles concerned implementation of assimilations like palatalization of alveolar stops in Bulgarian and uvularization of vowels in Greenlandic. One assimilation, palatalization of velar consonants, is common to all three languages. A model of gesture programming based on these results is proposed. Poster presentation.