Toward an (even) more comprehensive model of speech production planning

Abstract

ABSTRACT Since the publication of Speaking in 1989, with its extraordinary goal of modelling the entire process of human speech generation from message conceptualisation to articulation, encompassing results from a wide range of empirical studies, much new information has emerged about three aspects of speech production that were not clearly in focus at that time. This evidence has revealed 1) the systematic patterns of context-governed surface phonetic variation, and the active control of these patterns exercised by speakers and listeners, 2) the depth and pervasiveness of prosodic influences on those patterns, and 3) the close alignment of co-speech gestures with the prosodic structure of an utterance. This paper reviews some of that evidence, and suggests how its implications may constrain models of speech production planning, as those models become more comprehensive in their treatment of higher-level structures, and of aspects of the communicative act beyond the articulation of lexical and syntactic elements.