Speech is the vocalized form of human Humans are a species of animal known taxonomically as Homo sapiens , and are the only extant member of the Homo genus of bipedal primates in Hominidae, the great ape family. However, in some cases "human" is used to refer to any member of the genus Homo communication. It is based upon the syntactic In linguistics, syntax is the study of the principles and rules for constructing sentences in natural languages combination of lexicals In linguistics, the lexicon of a language is its vocabulary, including its words and expressions. More formally, it is a language's inventory of lexemes. Coined in English 1603, the word "lexicon" derives from the Greek "λεξικόν" , neut. of "λεξικός" (lexikos), "of or for words", from "λέ and names A name is a label for a noun, normally used to distinguish one from another. Names can identify a class or category of things, or a single thing, either uniquely, or within a given context. A personal name identifies a specific unique and identifiable individual person, and may or may not include a middle name. The name of a specific entity is that are drawn from very large (usually >10,000 different words A word is the smallest free form in a language, in contrast to a morpheme, which is the smallest unit of meaning. A word may consist of only one morpheme (e.g. wolf), but a single morpheme may not be able to exist as a free form (e.g. the English plural morpheme -s)) vocabularies A person's vocabulary is the set of words they are familiar with in a language. A vocabulary usually grows and evolves with age, and serves as a useful and fundamental tool for communication and acquiring knowledge. Each spoken word is created out of the phonetic Phonetics is a branch of linguistics that comprises the study of the sounds of human speech. It is concerned with the physical properties of speech sounds (phones): their physiological production, acoustic properties, auditory perception, and neurophysiological status. Phonology, on the other hand, is concerned with abstract, grammatical combination of a limited set of vowel In phonetics, a vowel is a sound in spoken language, such as English ah! [ɑː] or oh! [oʊ], pronounced with an open vocal tract so that there is no build-up of air pressure at any point above the glottis. This contrasts with consonants, such as English sh! [ʃː], where there is a constriction or closure at some point along the vocal tract. A and consonant In articulatory phonetics, a consonant is a speech sound that is articulated with complete or partial closure of the vocal tract. Examples are [p], pronounced with the lips; [t], pronounced with the front of the tongue; [k], pronounced with the back of the tongue; [h], pronounced in the throat; [f] and [s], pronounced by forcing air through a speech sound units. These vocabularies, the syntax which structures them, and their set of speech sound units, differ creating the existence of many thousands of different types of mutually unintelligible In linguistics, mutual intelligibility is recognized as a relationship between languages in which speakers of different but related languages can readily understand each other without intentional study or extraordinary effort. It is sometimes used as one criterion for distinguishing languages from dialects, though sociolinguistic factors are also human languages Language is a term most commonly used to refer to so called "natural languages" — the forms of communication considered peculiar to humankind. By extension the term also refers to the type of human thought process which creates and uses language. Essential to both meanings is the systematic creation, maintenance and use of systems of. Human speakers (polyglots Multilingualism is the use of two or more languages, either by an individual speaker or by a community of speakers. Multilingual speakers outnumber monolingual speakers in the world's population. The generic term for a multilingual person is polyglot) are often able to communicate in two or more of them. The vocal abilities that enable humans to produce speech also provide humans with the ability to sing Singing is the act of producing musical sounds with the voice, and augments regular speech by the use of both tonality and rhythm. A person who sings is called a singer or vocalist. Singers perform music known as songs that can either be sung a cappella or accompanied by musicians and instruments ranging from a single instrumentalist to a full.

A gestural form of human communication exists for the deaf Hearing impairment or deafness refers to conditions in which individuals are fully or partially unable to detect or perceive at least some frequencies of sound which can typically be heard by members of their species. Use of the term impaired implies that deafness presents an inherent disadvantage to an animal, a view that is rejected within the in the form of sign language A sign language is a language which, instead of acoustically conveyed sound patterns, uses visually transmitted sign patterns (manual communication, body language) to convey meaning—simultaneously combining hand shapes, orientation and movement of the hands, arms or body, and facial expressions to fluidly express a speaker's thoughts. Speech in some cultures Culture is a term that has different meanings. For example, in 1952, Alfred Kroeber and Clyde Kluckhohn compiled a list of 164 definitions of "culture" in Culture: A Critical Review of Concepts and Definitions. However, the word "culture" is most commonly used in three basic senses: has become the basis of a written language A written language is the representation of a language by means of a writing system. Written language is an invention in that it must be taught to children, who will instinctively learn or create spoken or gestural languages.[citation needed], often one that differs in its vocabulary, syntax and phonetics from its associated spoken one, a situation called diglossia In linguistics, diglossia refers to the use by a language community of two languages or dialects: the first is the community's present day vernacular; the second may be an ancient version of the same language (e.g. Arabic), or a distinct yet closely related present day dialect (e.g. Norwegian with Bokmål and Nynorsk, or Chinese with Standard. Speech in addition to its use in communication, it is suggested by some psychologists There are many different types of psychologists, as is reflected by the 56 different divisions of the American Psychological Association . Psychologists are generally described as being either "applied" or "research-oriented". The common terms used to describe this central division in psychology are "scientists" or & such as Vygotsky Lev Semyonovich Vygotsky was a Soviet psychologist and the founder of cultural-historical psychology is internally used by mental processes to enhance and organize cognition Cognition is the scientific term for "the process of thought." Usage of the term varies in different disciplines; for example in psychology and cognitive science, it usually refers to an information processing view of an individual's psychological functions. Other interpretations of the meaning of cognition link it to the development of in the form of an interior monologue Stream of consciousness refers to the flow of thoughts in the conscious mind. The full range of thoughts that one can be aware of can form the content of this stream, not just verbal thoughts. Commonly used experimental techniques, including self-reporting, gives easier access to verbal thoughts than to thoughts more closely connected to senses.

Speech is researched in terms of the speech production and speech perception Speech perception is the process by which the sounds of language are heard, interpreted and understood. The study of speech perception is closely linked to the fields of phonetics and phonology in linguistics and cognitive psychology and perception in psychology. Research in speech perception seeks to understand how human listeners recognize of the sounds Sound is a travelling wave that is an oscillation of pressure transmitted through a solid, liquid, or gas, composed of frequencies within the range of hearing and of a level sufficiently strong to be heard, or the sensation stimulated in organs of hearing by such vibrations used in spoken language Spoken language is a form of communication in which words derived from a large vocabulary together with a diverse variety of names are uttered through or with the mouth. All words are made up from a limited set of vowels and consonants. The spoken words they make are stringed into syntactically organized sentences and phrases. The vocabulary and. Other research topics concern speech repetition Speech repetition is the saying by one individual of the spoken vocalizations made by another individual. This requires the ability in the person making the copy to map the sensory input they hear from the other person's vocal pronunciation into a similar motor output with their own vocal tract, the ability to map heard spoken words into the vocalizations needed to recreated that plays a key role in the vocabulary A person's vocabulary is the set of words they are familiar with in a language. A vocabulary usually grows and evolves with age, and serves as a useful and fundamental tool for communication and acquiring knowledge expansion in children Biologically, a child is generally a human between the stages of birth and puberty. The legal definition[by whom?] of "child" generally refers to a minor, otherwise known as a person younger than the age of majority. "Child" may also describe a relationship with a parent or authority figure, or signify group membership in a and speech errors A speech error is a speech pattern that differs from some standard pattern. Speech errors are common among children, who have yet to refine their speech, and can frequently continue into adulthood. They sometimes lead to embarrassment and betrayal of the speaker's regional or ethnic origins. However, it is also common for them to enter the popular. Several academic disciplines study these including acoustics Acoustics is the interdisciplinary science that deals with the study of all mechanical waves in gases, liquids, and solids including vibration, sound, ultrasound and infrasound. A scientist who works in the field of acoustics is an acoustician while someone working in the field of acoustics technology may be called an acoustical or audio engineer, psychology Psychology is the scientific study of human or other animal mental functions and behaviors. In this field, a professional practitioner or researcher is called a psychologist. Psychologists are classified as social or behavioral scientists. Psychological research can be considered either basic or applied. Psychologists attempt to understand the, speech pathology Human communication includes speech , language (phonology, morphology, syntax, semantics, pragmatics), both receptive and expressive language (including reading and writing), and non-verbal communication such as facial expression, posture and gesture. Swallowing problems managed under speech therapy are problems in the oral and pharyngeal stages, linguistics Linguistics is the scientific study of natural language. Linguistics encompasses a number of sub-fields. An important topical division is between the study of language structure and the study of meaning (semantics and pragmatics). Grammar encompasses morphology (the formation and composition of words), syntax (the rules that determine how words, cognitive science Cognitive science is the interdisciplinary study of mind and intelligence, e.g., how information is represented and transformed in a brain or in a machine. It consists of multiple research disciplines, including psychology, artificial intelligence, philosophy, neuroscience, learning sciences, linguistics, anthropology, sociology, and education. It, communication studies Communication studies is an academic field that deals with processes of communication, commonly defined as the sharing of symbols over distances in space and time. Hence, communication studies encompasses a wide range of topics and contexts ranging from face-to-face conversation to speeches to mass media outlets such as television broadcasting, otolaryngology Otolaryngology or ENT is the branch of medicine that specializes in the diagnosis and treatment of ear, nose, throat, and head and neck disorders. The full name of the specialty is otolaryngology-head and neck surgery. Practitioners are called otolaryngologists-head and neck surgeons, or sometimes otorhinolaryngologists (ORL). Otolaryngology is and computer science Computer science or computing science is the study of the theoretical foundations of information and computation, and of practical techniques for their implementation and application in computer systems. It is frequently described as the systematic study of algorithmic processes that create, describe, and transform information. Computer science. Another area of research is how the human brain The human brain is the center of the human nervous system and is a highly complex organ. Enclosed in the cranium, it has the same general structure as the brains of other mammals, but is over three times as large as the brain of a typical mammal with an equivalent body size. Most of the expansion comes from the cerebral cortex, a convoluted layer in its different areas such as the Broca's area The production of language has been linked to the Broca’s area since Paul Pierre Broca reported impairments in two patients. They had lost the ability to speak after injury to the posterior inferior frontal gyrus of the brain. Since then, the approximate region he identified has become known as Broca’s area, and the deficit in language and Wernicke's area Wernicke's area is one of the two parts of the cerebral cortex linked since the late nineteenth century to speech (the other is the Broca's area). It is involved in the understanding of written and spoken language. It is traditionally considered to consist of the posterior section of the superior temporal gyrus in the dominant cerebral hemisphere ( underlies speech.

It is controversial how far human speech is unique in that other animals also communicate Animal language is the modeling of human language in non human animal systems. While the term is widely used, researchers agree that animal languages are not as complex or expressive as human language with vocalizations. While none in the wild Wildness is literally the quality of being wild or untamed, but further to this, it has been defined as a quality produced in nature , as that which emerges from a forest (Micoud 1993), and as a level of achievement in nature (Cookson 2004). It differs from wilderness, which is a place where wildness occurs uses syntax nor compatibly large vocabularies, research upon the nonverbal abilities of language trained apes An ape is any member of the Hominoidea superfamily of primates, including humans. Due to its ambiguous nature, the term ape has been deemphasized in favor of Hominoidea as a means of describing taxonomic relationships such as Washoe Washoe was a chimpanzee who was the first non-human to learn to use some of the signs of a human language, that of American Sign Language. She also passed on some of her knowledge to her adopted son, Loulis and Kanzi Kanzi , is a male Bonobo who has been featured in several studies on great ape language. According to Sue Savage-Rumbaugh, a primatologist who has studied the bonobo throughout her life, Kanzi has exhibited advanced linguistic aptitude raises the possibility that they might have these capabilities.

The origins of speech The origin of language, known in linguistics as glottogony refers to the acquisition of the human ability to use language at some point during the Paleolithic are unknown and subject to much debate and speculation.

Speech production

In linguistics Linguistics is the scientific study of natural language. Linguistics encompasses a number of sub-fields. An important topical division is between the study of language structure and the study of meaning (semantics and pragmatics). Grammar encompasses morphology (the formation and composition of words), syntax (the rules that determine how words (articulatory phonetics The field of articulatory phonetics is a subfield of phonetics. In studying articulation, phoneticians explain how humans produce speech sounds via the interaction of different physiological structures), manner of articulation describes how the tongue, lips, jaw, and other speech organs are involved in making a sound make contact. Often the concept is only used for the production of consonants In articulatory phonetics, a consonant is a speech sound that is articulated with complete or partial closure of the vocal tract. Examples are [p], pronounced with the lips; [t], pronounced with the front of the tongue; [k], pronounced with the back of the tongue; [h], pronounced in the throat; [f] and [s], pronounced by forcing air through a. For any place of articulation, there may be several manners, and therefore several homorganic consonants.

Normal human speech is produced with pulmonary pressure provided by the lungs which creates phonation in the glottis in the larynx that then is modified by the vocal tract into different vowels and consonants. However humans can pronounce words without the use of the lungs and glottis in alaryngeal speech of which there are three types: esophageal speech, pharyngeal speech and buccal speech (better known as Donald Duck talk).

Speech perception

Speech perception refers to the processes by which humans are able to interpret and understand the sounds used in language. The study of speech perception is closely linked to the fields of phonetics and phonology in linguistics and cognitive psychology and perception in psychology. Research in speech perception seeks to understand how human listeners recognize speech sounds and use this information to understand spoken language. Speech research has applications in building computer systems that can recognize speech, as well as improving speech recognition for hearing- and language-impaired listeners. Rosetta is an example of listening software.

Speech repetition

Spoken vocalizations are quickly turned from sensory inputs into motor instructions needed for their immediate or delayed (in phonological memory) vocal imitation. This occurs independently of speech perception. This mapping plays a key role in enabling children to expand their spoken vocabulary and hence the ability of human language to transmit across generations.^[1]

Speech errors

Speech is a complex activity with the result that spoken errors are often made. These have been used by scientists to understand the nature of the processes involved in its production.

Problems involving speech

There are several organic and psychological factors that can affect speech. Among these are:

1. Diseases and disorders of the lungs or the vocal cords, including paralysis, respiratory infections, vocal fold nodules and cancers of the lungs and throat.
2. Diseases and disorders of the brain, including alogia, aphasias, dysarthria, dystonia and speech processing disorders, where impaired motor planning, nerve transmission, phonological processing or perception of the message (as opposed to the actual sound) leads to poor speech production.
3. Hearing problems, such as otitis media effusion and auditory processing disorder can lead to phonological problems.
4. Articulatory problems, such as stuttering, lisping, cleft palate, ataxia, or nerve damage leading to problems in articulation. Tourette syndrome and tics can also affect speech. A lot of people also have a slur in their voice
5. In addition to dysphasia, anomia and auditory processing disorder can impede the quality of auditory perception, and therefore, expression. Those who are Hard of Hearing or deaf may be considered to fall into this category.

References

1. ^ Masur EF. (1995). Infants' early verbal imitation and their later lexical development. Merrill-Palmer Quarterly, 41, 286-306.OCLC 89395784

See also

• Index of linguistics articles
• Vocology
• Talking birds

Categories: Oral communication | Language

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