articulatoire

Articulatoire, in English articulatory, refers to the aspects of speech production related to the articulation of sounds through movement and configuration of the vocal tract. It focuses on how the vocal organs—the lips, tongue (tip, blade, dorsum), teeth, alveolar ridge, hard palate, soft palate (velum), jaw, and glottis—arrange themselves to create distinct speech sounds.

In articulatory phonetics, sounds are described by place of articulation (where the constriction occurs), manner of articulation (how the constriction is produced), and voicing (whether the vocal cords vibrate). Common categories include bilabial, alveolar, and velar places; stops, fricatives, and nasals as manners; and voiced or voiceless distinctions. The study emphasizes both the static positions and the dynamic movements of articulators during speech, as well as the timing and coordination between different gestures.

The field employs a range of observational and instrumental methods to study articulation. Palatography and electropalatography map contact patterns of the tongue with the palate. Imaging and tracking techniques such as ultrasound, real-time magnetic resonance imaging (MRI), X-ray microbeam, and electromagnetic articulography provide data on articulator movement in real time. These data support analysis of coarticulation, where adjacent sounds influence each other’s articulation, and inform theories in phonetics and phonology.

Applications of articulatory research include improving speech synthesis and recognition, informing language teaching and pronunciation training, guiding diagnosis and therapy in speech-language pathology, and aiding forensic phonetics.