articulatory

Articulatory refers to aspects of speech production involving the movement and configuration of the vocal tract. In linguistics, articulatory phonetics studies how sounds are produced by the lips, tongue, teeth, alveolar ridge, palate, velum, glottis, and other articulators, and how these configurations create phonetic contrasts. The basic dimensions are place of articulation (where a constriction occurs), manner of articulation (how the constriction is made), and voicing (whether the vocal cords vibrate). Common places include bilabial, labiodental, dental, alveolar, postalveolar, velar, and glottal; manners include stops, fricatives, nasals, approximants, trills, and taps.

Researchers use observational data and instrumental techniques such as electromagnetic articulography, ultrasound imaging of the tongue, MRI, palatography, and x-ray or endoscopy to visualize and measure articulator movement. These data inform phonetic descriptions, phonology, and the design of speech technologies.

A contemporary theoretical framework is articulatory phonology, which treats speech sounds as sets of coordinated articulatory gestures. This approach emphasizes the temporal coordination of multiple articulators that realize phonological segments as gestures rather than discrete sounds.

Applications include speech synthesis and recognition, language teaching, forensic phonetics, and clinical assessment of articulation disorders such as dysarthria or apraxia. The term articular relates more broadly to the function and structure of motion in producing spoken language, intersecting linguistics, cognitive science, and speech-language pathology.