title: Characteristics of velocity profiles of speech movements.
abstract: The control of individual speech gestures was investigated by examining laryngeal and tongue movements during vowel and consonant production. A number of linguistic manipulations known to alter the durational characteristics of speech (i.e., speech rate, lexical stress, and phonemic identity) were tested. In all cases a consistent pattern was observed in the kinematics of the laryngeal and tongue gestures. The ratio of maximum instantaneous velocity to movement amplitude, a kinematic index of mass-normalized stiffness, was found to increase systematically as movement duration decreased. Specifically, the ratio of maximum velocity to movement amplitude varied as a function of a parameter, C, times the reciprocal of movement duration. The conformity of the data to this relation indicates that durational change is accomplished by scalar adjustment of a base velocity form. These findings are consistent with the idea that kinematic change is produced by the specification of articulator stiffness.
authors.forename: K G
authors.initials: KG
authors.lastname: Munhall
authors.forename: D J
authors.initials: DJ
authors.lastname: Ostry
authors.forename: A
authors.initials: A
authors.lastname: Parush
mesh_terms: D001696:Biomechanical Phenomena; D006801:Humans; D007830:Larynx / Q000502:physiology*; D009068:Movement; D010699:Phonation; D013060:Speech / Q000502:physiology*; D013068:Speech Production Measurement; D014059:Tongue / Q000502:physiology*