Between ‘whims of fashion’ and ‘phonetic law

Performance constraints in speech production in the face of linguistic diversity

Abstract

There is a long tradition in the speech sciences seeking to trace the shaping force of physiological constraints in the world’s languages. Particularly the syllable has been in the focus of biologically oriented approaches and has been seen as the primary locus for the manifestation of universal production constraints. We discuss how current research into patterns of articulatory coordination within the syllable has revealed that by hypothesis preferred patterns are across languages more varied than anticipated by these models. Data from Polish are used as a case in point to exemplify how trade-offs between different production constraints may condition a departure from a by hypothesis preferred pattern. We discuss the extent to which these trade-offs may be language specific and the ramifications for modelling speech production.