Speech Timing
Implications for Theories of Phonology, Phonetics, and Speech Motor Control
Oxford Studies in Phonology and Phonetics Series, Vol. 5

This book explores the nature of cognitive representations and processes in speech motor control, based primarily on evidence from speech timing. It engages with the key question of whether phonological representations are spatio-temporal, as in the Articulatory Phonology approach, or symbolic (atemporal and non-quantitative); this issue has fundamental implications for the architecture of the speech production planning system, particularly with regard to the number of planning components and the type of timing mechanisms. Alice Turk and Stefanie Shattuck-Hufnagel outline a number of arguments in favour of an alternative to the Articulatory Phonology/Task Dynamics model. They demonstrate that a different framework is needed to account for evidence from speech and non-speech timing behaviour, and specifically that three separate planning components must be posited: Phonological Planning, Phonetic Planning, and Motor-Sensory Implementation. The approach proposed in the book provides a clearer and more comprehensive account of what is known about motor timing in general and speech timing in particular. It will be of interest to phoneticians and phonologists from all theoretical backgrounds as well as to speech clinicians and technologists.

Alice Turk is Professor of Linguistic Phonetics at the University of Edinburgh. Over the last 25 years her research has focused on speech timing evidence for theories of phonology, phonetics, and speech motor control, as well as on prosody in speech production and perception. Her work has appeared in journals such as Laboratory Phonology, Phonology, Journal of Phonetics, and Journal of the Acoustical Society of America and in edited volumes from OUP, CUP, and de Gruyter. Stefanie Shattuck-Hufnagel is Principal Research Scientist in the Research Laboratory of Electronics at Massachusetts Institute of Technology. Her work explores the cognitive structures involved in speech production planning, particularly at the level of speech sound sequencing. Her research has been published in journals including Cognition, Phonetica, and Frontiers of Psychology and she is the co-author, with Jonathan Barnes, of the forthcoming volume Prosodic Theory and Practice (MIT Press).