SPEECH AS ARTICULATORY ENCODING OF COMMUNICATIVE FUNCTIONS

Yi Xu
University College London; Haskins Laboratories, New Haven, USA

ID 1743
[full paper]

Speech conveys communicative meanings by encoding functional contrasts. The contrasts are realised through articulation, a biomechanical process with specific constraints. Phonology, phonetics or any other theories of speech therefore cannot be autonomous from either communicative functions or biophysical mechanisms. Successful speech modeling can be achieved only if communicative fucntions and biophysical mechanisms are treated as the core rather than the margins of speech.