The Articulatory Function of the Larynx and the Origins of Speech

Abstract

The ‘laryngeal articulator,’ consisting of the glottal mechanism, the supraglottic tube, the pharyngeal/epiglottal mechanism, and including three levels of folds: the vocal folds, the ventricular folds, and the aryepiglottic folds, is shown to be responsible for the generation of multiple source vibrations and for the complex modification of the pharyngeal resonating chamber that accounts for a wide range of contrastive auditory qualities. These qualities are observed in a surprisingly large number of the languages of the world, both linguistically and paralinguistically, and they account for sounds which have been labeled as ‘pharyngeal,’ as ‘epiglottal,’ and as various phonation types. They reflect an expanding range of what have been known as the ‘states of the glottis’ and which may be more properly termed ‘states of the larynx.’ It has also been observed that infants, in their first months of life, produce a range of qualities, reflecting both phonatory possibilities and stricture types, that can also be attributed to the laryngeal articulator mechanism. Systematic observation of infants’ early speech production reveals that the control of articulatory detail in the pharynx is mastered during the first year of life. Understanding and control of manner of articulation in the pharynx appears to be a prerequisite for expanding articulatory control into the oral vocal tract. Taking the pharynx as a starting point for the ontogenetic learning of the speech production capacity offers fruitful insights into the phylogenetic development of speech.