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The respiratory organs used to create and modify airflow are divided into three regions: the vocal tract (supralaryngeal), the larynx, and the subglottal system. The airstream can be either egressive (out of the vocal tract) or ingressive (into the vocal tract).
The speech organs evolved in the first instance not for speech but for more basic bodily functions such as feeding and breathing. Nonhuman primates have broadly similar organs, but with different neural controls. [6] Non-human apes use their highly-flexible, maneuverable tongues for eating but not for vocalizing.
However speech production can occur without the use of the lungs and glottis in alaryngeal speech by using the upper parts of the vocal tract. An example of such alaryngeal speech is Donald Duck talk. [5] The vocal production of speech may be associated with the production of hand gestures that act to enhance the comprehensibility of what is ...
Phonetics is a branch of linguistics that studies how humans produce and perceive sounds or, in the case of sign languages, the equivalent aspects of sign. [1] Linguists who specialize in studying the physical properties of speech are phoneticians.
Since vowels are produced with an open vocal tract, the point where their production occurs cannot be easily determined. Therefore, they are not described in terms of a place of articulation but by the relative positions in vowel space. This is mostly dependent on their formant frequencies and less on the specific tongue position and lip rounding.
The place of articulation is where in the vocal tract the obstruction of the consonant occurs, and which speech organs are involved. Places include bilabial (both lips), alveolar (tongue against the gum ridge), and velar (tongue against soft palate).
Hormones are molecules secreted into the blood stream to be delivered at different targeted sites. They usually promote growth, differentiation and functionality in different organs or tissues. Their effect is due to their ability to bind to intracellular receptors, modulating the gene expression, and subsequently regulating protein synthesis. [21]
The production of speech is a highly complex motor task that involves approximately 100 orofacial, laryngeal, pharyngeal, and respiratory muscles. [2] [3] Precise and expeditious timing of these muscles is essential for the production of temporally complex speech sounds, which are characterized by transitions as short as 10 ms between frequency bands [4] and an average speaking rate of ...