Electromyography as a Speech Research Technique with an Application to Labial Stops

Abstract

Electromyographic techniques have been developed as indicators of the physiological processes of speech production. They provide a sensitive and direct means for describing the speech gesture in terms of the activity of the actuators rather than the consequent displacements of the speech mechanism. To the extent that perception is geared to articulation, this action pattern may be expected to yield simpler descriptions of the basic units of speech than have been available in acoustic or traditional phonetic terms (Franklin S. Cooper, Alvin M. Liberman, Katherine Safford Harris, and Patti Murray Grubb, “Some input-output relations observed in experiments on the perception of speech,” Proceedings of the Second International Congress on Cybernetics, Namur, 1958). This account attempts no more than a description of the experimental techniques and their application to a specific study of the English labial stops /p,b/. The electromyographic measures showed no significant differences in timing or amount of muscle activity at the lips between /p/ and /b/. In this pilot study, the electromyographic method has proved feasible and has yielded a partial description of /p,b/ that is simply structured and consistent with the acoustic-perceptual characterization of these sounds.