Volume 25, Issue 3

Several studies employing the experimental task of click localization have lead to the hypothesis that syntactic structure units are the primary units in sentence perception. Studies involving reaction time to clicks in speech imply a modification of this hypothesis: That the initial perceptual unit is a phonologically defined phrase.

The primary purpose of this experiment was to systematically investigate the actions of the intrinsic muscles of the larynx during the production of voiced and voiceless consonants. Generally speaking, computer-averaged EMG curves for the laryngeal muscles showed participation of the posterior cricoarytenoid for voiceless consonants and suppression for voiced consonants. The reciprocal pattern was found for the interarytenoid muscle. Similar reciprocal patterns were evident along the timing dimension. These results are discussed in terms of recently proposed laryngeal feature systems.

This study is placed on the phonetic and phonological levels. It allows: (1) to shop up the acoustic structure of the oral and nasal vowels. Based on a spectrographic analysis the formant frequencies are controlled by statistical procedures and the relative intensities are subjected to a theoretical verification; (2) to extract the phonological system on the distinctive feature basis defined by R. Jakobson et al. [1952].