H. Betty Kollia
Vincent L. Gracco
Katherine S. Harris
Haskins Labs., 270 Crown St., New Haven, CT 06510
One approach to understanding the control of speech motor actions is to identify the manner in which individual articulators are coordinated. A number of recent investigations indicate that the relative timing of the lips, jaw, and larynx are functionally constrained during bilabial closing. The interpretation is that speech movements are not controlled independently, but are controlled in a global manner reflecting large scale vocal tract actions. A recent study [Kollia et al., J. Acoust. Soc. Am. 91, 2474 (A) (1992)] showed that when functionally related, lips, jaw, and velum behave in a manner that reflects this same complex sensorimotor organization. The present investigation then, is an attempt to refine observations of interarticulator coherence to include the velum. Lip, jaw, and velar kinematics were recorded optoelectronically and simultaneously with the acoustic signal during productions of the utterance /mabnab/. The spatial and temporal relations between the lips, the jaw, and the velum were examined. Evidence of temporal stability was found in the patterns of interarticulatory coherence. [Work supported by NIH Grant Nos. DC-00121 and DC-00594 to Haskins Laboratories.]