Syllable as a synchronization mechanism
DOI:
https://doi.org/10.36505/ExLing-2017/08/0003/000305Keywords:
synchronization, target approximation, edge synchronizationAbstract
Despite being highly intuitive and widely recognized, syllable continues to be a controversial notion. It is argued here that a resolution may lie in recognizing that speech is a highly skilled motor activity with a core problem shared with other motor skills: how to reduce degrees of freedom (DOF) to the extent that makes its central nervous control possible. The most effective way of reducing DOF is to synchronize multiple articulatory movements, and the syllable serves exactly this function for speech. This synchronization hypothesis also offers resolutions to coarticulation and many other unsettled problems, and has implications for motor control in general.
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Copyright (c) 2017 Yi Xu (Author)
This work is licensed under a Creative Commons Attribution 4.0 International License.
Articles are published under the Creative Commons Attribution 4.0 International License (CC BY 4.0), which permits unrestricted use, distribution, and reproduction in any medium, provided the original author and source are properly credited.
