Speech production is the process by which thoughts are translated into speech. This includes the selection of

word A word is a basic element of language that carries an semantics, objective or pragmatics, practical semantics, meaning, can be used on its own, and is uninterruptible. Despite the fact that language speakers often have an intuitive grasp of w ...

s, the organization of relevant

grammatical In linguistics, grammaticality is determined by the conformity to language usage as derived by the grammar of a particular variety (linguistics), speech variety. The notion of grammaticality rose alongside the theory of generative grammar, the go ...

forms, and then the articulation of the resulting sounds by the

motor system The motor system is the set of central and peripheral structures in the nervous system that support motor functions, i.e. movement. Peripheral structures may include skeletal muscles and neural connections with muscle tissues. Central structur ...

using the

vocal apparatus In articulatory phonetics, the place of articulation (also point of articulation) of a consonant is a location along the vocal tract where its production occurs. It is a point where a constriction is made between an active and a passive articula ...

. Speech production can be spontaneous such as when a person creates the words of a

conversation Conversation is interactive communication between two or more people. The development of conversational skills and etiquette is an important part of socialization. The development of conversational skills in a new language is a frequent focus ...

, reactive such as when they name a picture or

read Read Read may refer to: * Reading, human cognitive process of decoding symbols in order to construct or derive meaning * Read (automobile), an American car manufactured from 1913 to 1915 * Read (biology), an inferred sequence of base pairs of ...

aloud a

written word Writing is a medium of human communication which involves the representation of a language through a system of physically Epigraphy, inscribed, Printing press, mechanically transferred, or Word processor, digitally represented Symbols (semiot ...

, or imitative, such as in

speech repetition 250px, Children copy with their own mouths the words spoken by the mouths of those around them. That enables them to learn the pronunciation of words not already in their vocabulary. Speech repetition occurs when individuals speech, speak the so ...

. Speech production is not the same as

language production Language production is the production of spoken or written language. In psycholinguistics, it describes all of the stages between having a concept to express and translating that concept into linguistic forms. These stages have been described in ...

since

language Language is a structured system of communication. The structure of a language is its grammar and the free components are its vocabulary. Languages are the primary means by which humans communicate, and may be conveyed through a variety of met ...

can also be produced manually by

sign A sign is an object, quality, event, or entity whose presence or occurrence indicates the probable presence or occurrence of something else. A natural sign bears a causal relation to its object—for instance, thunder is a sign of storm, or me ...

s. In ordinary fluent

people pronounce roughly four syllables, ten or twelve

phoneme In phonology and linguistics, a phoneme () is a unit of sound that can distinguish one word from another in a particular language. For example, in most dialects of English, with the notable exception of the West Midlands and the north-west o ...

s and two to three words out of their

vocabulary A vocabulary is a set of familiar words within a person's language. A vocabulary, usually developed with age, serves as a useful and fundamental tool for communication and acquiring knowledge. Acquiring an extensive vocabulary is one of the la ...

(that can contain 10 to 100 thousand words) each second. Errors in speech production are relatively rare occurring at a rate of about once in every 900 words in spontaneous speech. Words that are commonly spoken or learned early in life or easily imagined are quicker to say than ones that are rarely said, learnt later in life, or are abstract. Normally speech is created with pulmonary pressure provided by the

lung The lungs are the primary organs of the respiratory system in humans and most other animals, including some snails and a small number of fish. In mammals and most other vertebrates, two lungs are located near the backbone on either side of t ...

s that generates sound by

phonation The term phonation has slightly different meanings depending on the subfield of phonetics. Among some phoneticians, ''phonation'' is the process by which the vocal folds produce certain sounds through quasi-periodic vibration. This is the defini ...

through the

glottis The glottis is the opening between the vocal folds (the rima glottidis). The glottis is crucial in producing vowels and voiced consonants. Etymology From Ancient Greek ''γλωττίς'' (glōttís), derived from ''γλῶττα'' (glôtta), va ...

in the

larynx The larynx (), commonly called the voice box, is an organ in the top of the neck involved in breathing, producing sound and protecting the trachea against food aspiration. The opening of larynx into pharynx known as the laryngeal inlet is about ...

that then is modified by the

vocal tract The vocal tract is the cavity in human bodies and in animals where the sound produced at the sound source (larynx in mammals; syrinx (biology), syrinx in birds) is filtered. In birds it consists of the Vertebrate trachea, trachea, the Syrinx (bio ...

into different

vowel A vowel is a syllabic speech sound pronounced without any stricture in the vocal tract. Vowels are one of the two principal classes of speech sounds, the other being the consonant. Vowels vary in quality, in loudness and also in quantity (leng ...

s 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 and pronounced with the lips; and pronounced with the front of the tongue; and pronounced wit ...

s. However speech production can occur without the use of the lungs and glottis in

alaryngeal speech Alaryngeal speech is speech using an airstream mechanism that uses features other than the glottis to create voicing. There are three types: esophageal, buccal, and pharyngeal speech. Each of these uses an alternative method of creating phonati ...

by using the upper parts of the vocal tract. An example of such alaryngeal speech is

Donald Duck talk Donald Duck talk, formally called buccal speech, is an alaryngeal form of vocalization which uses the inner cheek to produce sound rather than the larynx. also published as The speech is most closely associated with the Disney cartoon character, ...

. The vocal production of speech may be associated with the production of hand

gestures A gesture is a form of non-verbal communication or non-vocal communication in which visible bodily actions communicate particular messages, either in place of, or in conjunction with, speech. Gestures include movement of the hands, face, or ot ...

that act to enhance the comprehensibility of what is being said. The development of speech production throughout an individual's life starts from an infant's first babble and is transformed into fully developed speech by the age of five.Harley, T.A. (2011), Psycholinguistics. (Volume 1). SAGE Publications. The first stage of speech doesn't occur until around age one (holophrastic phase). Between the ages of one and a half and two and a half the infant can produce short sentences (telegraphic phase). After two and a half years the infant develops systems of lemmas used in speech production. Around four or five the child's lemmas are largely increased; this enhances the child's production of correct speech and they can now produce speech like an adult. An adult now develops speech in four stages: Activation of lexical concepts, select lemmas needed, morphologically and

phonologically Phonology is the branch of linguistics that studies how languages or dialects systematically organize their sounds or, for sign languages, their constituent parts of signs. The term can also refer specifically to the sound or sign system of a ...

encode speech, and the word is phonetically encoded.

Three stages

The production of

spoken language A spoken language is a language produced by articulate sounds or (depending on one's definition) manual gestures, as opposed to a written language. An oral language or vocal language is a language produced with the vocal tract in contrast with a si ...

involves three major levels of processing: conceptualization, formulation, and articulation. The first is the processes of

conceptualization In information science a conceptualization is an abstract simplified view of some selected part of the world, containing the objects, concepts, and other entities that are presumed of interest for some particular purpose and the relationships betw ...

or conceptual preparation, in which the intention to create speech links a desired concept to the particular spoken words to be expressed. Here the preverbal intended messages are formulated that specify the concepts to be expressed.Levelt, W. (1999). "The neurocognition of language", p.87 -117. Oxford Press The second stage is formulation in which the linguistic form required for the expression of the desired message is created. Formulation includes grammatical encoding, morpho-phonological encoding, and phonetic encoding. Grammatical encoding is the process of selecting the appropriate syntactic word or lemma. The selected lemma then activates the appropriate

syntactic In linguistics, syntax () is the study of how words and morphemes combine to form larger units such as phrases and sentences. Central concerns of syntax include word order, grammatical relations, hierarchical sentence structure (constituency), ...

frame for the conceptualized message. Morpho-phonological encoding is the process of breaking words down into syllables to be produced in overt speech. Syllabification is dependent on the preceding and proceeding words, for instance: ''I-com-pre-hend'' vs. ''I-com-pre-hen-dit''. The final part of the formulation stage is phonetic encoding. This involves the activation of

articulatory gestures Articulatory gestures are the actions necessary to enunciate language. Examples of articulatory gestures are the hand movements necessary to enunciate sign language and the mouth movements of speech. In semiotic terms, these are the physical embo ...

dependent on the syllables selected in the morpho-phonological process, creating an articulatory score as the utterance is pieced together and the order of movements of the

is completed. The third stage of speech production is articulation, which is the execution of the articulatory score by the lungs, glottis, larynx,

tongue The tongue is a muscular organ (anatomy), organ in the mouth of a typical tetrapod. It manipulates food for mastication and swallowing as part of the digestive system, digestive process, and is the primary organ of taste. The tongue's upper surfa ...

lips The lips are the visible body part at the mouth of many animals, including humans. Lips are soft, movable, and serve as the opening for food intake and in the articulation of sound and speech. Human lips are a tactile sensory organ, and can be ...

jaw The jaw is any opposable articulated structure at the entrance of the mouth, typically used for grasping and manipulating food. The term ''jaws'' is also broadly applied to the whole of the structures constituting the vault of the mouth and serv ...

and other parts of the vocal apparatus resulting in speech. Blausen 0215 CerebralHemispheres

Neuroscience

The

motor control Motor control is the regulation of movement in organisms that possess a nervous system. Motor control includes reflexes as well as directed movement. To control movement, the nervous system must integrate multimodal sensory information (both f ...

for speech production in right handed people depends mostly upon areas in the left

cerebral hemisphere The vertebrate cerebrum (brain) is formed by two cerebral hemispheres that are separated by a groove, the longitudinal fissure. The brain can thus be described as being divided into left and right cerebral hemispheres. Each of these hemispheres ...

. These areas include the bilateral

supplementary motor area The supplementary motor area (SMA) is a part of the motor cortex of primates that contributes to the control of movement. It is located on the midline surface of the hemisphere just in front of (anterior to) the primary motor cortex leg representa ...

, the left posterior

inferior frontal gyrus The inferior frontal gyrus (IFG), (gyrus frontalis inferior), is the lowest positioned gyrus of the frontal gyri, of the frontal lobe, and is part of the prefrontal cortex. Its superior border is the inferior frontal sulcus (which divides it from ...

, the left insula, the left

primary motor cortex The primary motor cortex (Brodmann area 4) is a brain region that in humans is located in the dorsal portion of the frontal lobe. It is the primary region of the motor system and works in association with other motor areas including premotor co ...

and

temporal cortex The temporal lobe is one of the four major lobes of the cerebral cortex in the brain of mammals. The temporal lobe is located beneath the lateral fissure on both cerebral hemispheres of the mammalian brain. The temporal lobe is involved in pro ...

. There are also subcortical areas involved such as the

basal ganglia The basal ganglia (BG), or basal nuclei, are a group of subcortical nuclei, of varied origin, in the brains of vertebrates. In humans, and some primates, there are some differences, mainly in the division of the globus pallidus into an extern ...

and

cerebellum The cerebellum (Latin for "little brain") is a major feature of the hindbrain of all vertebrates. Although usually smaller than the cerebrum, in some animals such as the mormyrid fishes it may be as large as or even larger. In humans, the cerebel ...

. The cerebellum aids the sequencing of speech syllables into fast, smooth and rhythmically organized words and longer utterances.

Disorders

Speech production can be affected by several disorders: *

Aphasia Aphasia is an inability to comprehend or formulate language because of damage to specific brain regions. The major causes are stroke and head trauma; prevalence is hard to determine but aphasia due to stroke is estimated to be 0.1–0.4% in th ...

Anomic aphasia Anomic aphasia (also known as dysnomia, nominal aphasia, and amnesic aphasia) is a mild, fluent type of aphasia where individuals have word retrieval failures and cannot express the words they want to say (particularly nouns and verbs). By contra ...

Apraxia of speech Apraxia of speech (AOS), also called verbal apraxia, is a speech sound disorder affecting an individual's ability to translate conscious speech plans into motor plans, which results in limited and difficult speech ability. By the definition of a ...

Aprosodia Aprosodia is a neurological condition characterized by the inability of a person to properly convey or interpret emotional prosody. Prosody in language refers to the ranges of rhythm, pitch, stress, intonation, etc. These neurological deficits can ...

Auditory processing disorder Auditory processing disorder (APD), rarely known as King-Kopetzky syndrome or auditory disability with normal hearing (ADN), is a neurodevelopmental disorder affecting the way the brain processes auditory information. Individuals with APD usually ...

* Cluttering *

Developmental verbal dyspraxia Development of the human body is the process of growth to maturity. The process begins with fertilization, where an egg released from the ovary of a female is penetrated by a sperm cell from a male. The resulting zygote develops through mitos ...

Dysprosody Dysprosody, which may manifest as pseudo-foreign accent syndrome, refers to a disorder in which one or more of the prosodic functions are either compromised or eliminated. Prosody refers to the variations in melody, intonation, pauses, stresses, ...

Infantile speech Infantile speech, pedolalia, baby talk, infantile perseveration, or infantilism is a speech disorder, persistence of early speech development stage beyond the age when it is normally expected. It is characterized by the omission of some sounds and ...

Lisp A lisp is a speech impairment in which a person misarticulates sibilants (, , , , , , , ). These misarticulations often result in unclear speech. Types * A frontal lisp occurs when the tongue is placed anterior to the target. Interdental lisping ...

Malapropism A malapropism (also called a malaprop, acyrologia, or Dogberryism) is the mistaken use of an incorrect word in place of a word with a similar sound, resulting in a nonsensical, sometimes humorous utterance. An example is the statement attributed to ...

Mispronunciation In linguistics, mispronunciation is the act of pronouncing a word incorrectly. The matter of what is or is not mispronunciation is a contentious one, and indeed there is some disagreement about the extent to which the term is even meaningful. Lang ...

Speech disorder Speech disorders or speech impairments are a type of communication disorder in which normal speech is disrupted. This can mean stuttering, lisps, etc. Someone who is unable to speak due to a speech disorder is considered mute. Speech skills ar ...

Speech error A speech error, commonly referred to as a slip of the tongue (Latin: , or occasionally self-demonstratingly, ) or misspeaking, is a deviation (conscious or unconscious) from the apparently intended form of an utterance.Bussmann, Hadumod. Routled ...

Speech sound disorder A speech sound disorder (SSD) is a speech disorder in which some sounds (phonemes) are not produced or used correctly. The term "protracted phonological development" is sometimes preferred when describing children's speech, to emphasize the contin ...

Spoonerism A spoonerism is an occurrence in speech in which corresponding consonants, vowels, or morphemes are switched (see metathesis) between two words in a phrase. These are named after the Oxford don and ordained minister William Archibald Spooner, w ...

Stuttering Stuttering, also known as stammering, is a speech disorder in which the flow of speech is disrupted by involuntary repetitions and prolongations of sounds, syllables, words, or phrases as well as involuntary silent pauses or blocks in which the ...

History of speech production research

Until the late 1960s research on speech was focused on comprehension. As researchers collected greater volumes of

speech error A speech error, commonly referred to as a slip of the tongue (Latin: , or occasionally self-demonstratingly, ) or misspeaking, is a deviation (conscious or unconscious) from the apparently intended form of an utterance.Bussmann, Hadumod. Routled ...

data, they began to investigate the psychological processes responsible for the production of speech sounds and to contemplate possible processes for fluent speech. Findings from speech error research were soon incorporated into speech production models. Evidence from speech error data supports the following conclusions about speech production. Some of these ideas include: # Speech is planned in advance. # The

lexicon A lexicon is the vocabulary of a language or branch of knowledge (such as nautical or medical). In linguistics, a lexicon is a language's inventory of lexemes. The word ''lexicon'' derives from Koine Greek language, Greek word (), neuter of () ...

is organized both semantically and phonologically. That is by meaning, and by the sound of the words. # Morphologically complex words are assembled. Words that we produce that contain morphemes are put together during the speech production process.

Morpheme A morpheme is the smallest meaningful Constituent (linguistics), constituent of a linguistic expression. The field of linguistics, linguistic study dedicated to morphemes is called morphology (linguistics), morphology. In English, morphemes are ...

s are the smallest units of language that contain meaning. For example, "ed" on a past tense word. #

Affix In linguistics, an affix is a morpheme that is attached to a word stem to form a new word or word form. Affixes may be derivational, like English ''-ness'' and ''pre-'', or inflectional, like English plural ''-s'' and past tense ''-ed''. They ar ...

es and functors behave differently from context words in slips of the tongue. This means the rules about the ways in which a word can be used are likely stored with them, which means generally when speech errors are made, the mistake words maintain their functions and make grammatical sense. #

s reflect rule knowledge. Even in our mistakes, speech is not nonsensical. The words and sentences that are produced in speech errors are typically grammatical, and do not violate the rules of the language being spoken.

Aspects of speech production models

Models of speech production must contain specific elements to be viable. These include the elements from which speech is composed, listed below. The accepted models of speech production discussed in more detail below all incorporate these stages either explicitly or implicitly, and the ones that are now outdated or disputed have been criticized for overlooking one or more of the following stages. The attributes of accepted speech models are: a) a conceptual stage where the speaker abstractly identifies what they wish to express. b) a syntactic stage where a frame is chosen that words will be placed into, this frame is usually

sentence structure In linguistics, syntax () is the study of how words and morphemes combine to form larger units such as phrases and sentences. Central concerns of syntax include word order, grammatical relations, hierarchical sentence structure ( constituency) ...

. c) a lexical stage where a search for a word occurs based on meaning. Once the word is selected and retrieved, information about it becomes available to the speaker involving

phonology Phonology is the branch of linguistics that studies how languages or dialects systematically organize their sounds or, for sign languages, their constituent parts of signs. The term can also refer specifically to the sound or sign system of a ...

and morphology. d) a phonological stage where the abstract information is converted into a speech like form. e) a

phonetic Phonetics is a branch of linguistics that studies how humans produce and perceive sounds, or in the case of sign languages, the equivalent aspects of sign. Linguists who specialize in studying the physical properties of speech are phoneticians. ...

stage where instructions are prepared to be sent to the muscles of articulation. Also, models must allow for forward planning mechanisms, a buffer, and a monitoring mechanism. Following are a few of the influential models of speech production that account for or incorporate the previously mentioned stages and include information discovered as a result of speech error studies and other disfluency data, such as

tip-of-the-tongue Tip of the tongue (also known as ''lethologica'') is the phenomenon of failing to retrieve a word or term from memory, combined with partial recall and the feeling that retrieval is imminent. The phenomenon's name comes from the saying, "It's on ...

research.

Model

The Utterance Generator Model (1971)

The Utterance Generator Model was proposed by Fromkin (1971). It is composed of six stages and was an attempt to account for the previous findings of speech error research. The stages of the Utterance Generator Model were based on possible changes in representations of a particular utterance. The first stage is where a person generates the meaning they wish to convey. The second stage involves the message being translated onto a syntactic structure. Here, the message is given an outline. The third stage proposed by Fromkin is where/when the message gains different stresses and intonations based on the meaning. The fourth stage Fromkin suggested is concerned with the selection of words from the

. After the words have been selected in Stage 4, the message undergoes phonological specification. The fifth stage applies rules of pronunciation and produces syllables that are to be outputted. The sixth and final stage of Fromkin's Utterance Generator Model is the coordination of the motor commands necessary for speech. Here, phonetic features of the message are sent to the relevant muscles of the vocal tract so that the intended message can be produced. Despite the ingenuity of Fromkin's model, researchers have criticized this interpretation of speech production. Although The Utterance Generator Model accounts for many nuances and data found by speech error studies, researchers decided it still had room to be improved.

The Garrett model (1975)

A more recent (than Fromkin's) attempt to explain speech production was published by Garrett in 1975. Garrett also created this model by compiling speech error data. There are many overlaps between this model and the Fromkin model from which it was based, but he added a few things to the Fromkin model that filled some of the gaps being pointed out by other researchers. The Garrett Fromkin models both distinguish between three levels—a conceptual level, and sentence level, and a motor level. These three levels are common to contemporary understanding of Speech Production. Moraghfigure4

Dell's model (1994)

In 1994, Dell proposed a model of the lexical network that became fundamental in the understanding of the way speech is produced. This model of the lexical network attempts to symbolically represent the lexicon, and in turn, explain how people choose the words they wish to produce, and how those words are to be organized into speech. Dell's model was composed of three stages, semantics, words, and phonemes. The words in the highest stage of the model represent the semantic category. (In the image, the words representing semantic category are winter, footwear, feet, and snow represent the semantic categories of boot and skate.) The second level represents the words that refer to the semantic category (In the image, boot and skate). And, the third level represents the phonemes ( syllabic information including

onset Onset may refer to: *Onset (audio), the beginning of a musical note or sound *Onset, Massachusetts Onset is a census-designated place (CDP) in the town of Wareham, Massachusetts, United States. The population was 1,573 at the 2010 census. Geog ...

, vowels, and codas).

Levelt model (1999)

Levelt further refined the lexical network proposed by Dell. Through the use of speech error data, Levelt recreated the three levels in Dell's model. The conceptual stratum, the top and most abstract level, contains information a person has about ideas of particular concepts. The conceptual stratum also contains ideas about how concepts relate to each other. This is where word selection would occur, a person would choose which words they wish to express. The next, or middle level, the lemma-stratum, contains information about the syntactic functions of individual words including tense and function. This level functions to maintain syntax and place words correctly into sentence structure that makes sense to the speaker. The lowest and final level is the form stratum which, similarly to the Dell Model, contains syllabic information. From here, the information stored at the form stratum level is sent to the motor cortex where the vocal apparatus are coordinated to physically produce speech sounds.

Places of articulation

The physical structure of the human nose, throat, and vocal cords allows for the productions of many unique sounds, these areas can be further broken down into

places of articulation In articulatory phonetics, the place of articulation (also point of articulation) of a consonant is a location along the vocal tract where its production occurs. It is a point where a constriction is made between an active and a passive articula ...

. Different sounds are produced in different areas, and with different muscles and breathing techniques. Our ability to utilize these skills to create the various sounds needed to communicate effectively is essential to our speech production. Speech is a psychomotor activity. Speech between two people is a

- they can be casual, formal, factual, or transactional, and the language structure/ narrative genre employed differs depending upon the context. Affect is a significant factor that controls speech, manifestations that disrupt memory in language use due to affect include feelings of tension, states of apprehension, as well as physical signs like nausea. Language level manifestations that affect brings could be observed with the speaker's hesitations, repetitions, false starts, incompletion, syntactic blends, etc. Difficulties in

manner of articulation In articulatory phonetics, the manner of articulation is the configuration and interaction of the articulators (speech organs such as the tongue, lips, and palate) when making a speech sound. One parameter of manner is ''stricture,'' that is, h ...

can contribute to speech difficulties and impediments. It is suggested that infants are capable of making the entire spectrum of possible vowel and consonant sounds.

IPA IPA commonly refers to: * India pale ale, a style of beer * International Phonetic Alphabet, a system of phonetic notation * Isopropyl alcohol, a chemical compound IPA may also refer to: Organizations International * Insolvency Practitioners ...

has created a system for understanding and categorizing all possible speech sounds, which includes information about the way in which the sound is produced, and where the sounds is produced. This is extremely useful in the understanding of speech production because speech can be transcribed based on sounds rather than spelling, which may be misleading depending on the language being spoken. Average speaking rates are in the 120 to 150 words per minute (wpm) range, and same is the recommended guidelines for recording audiobooks. As people grow accustomed to a particular language they are prone to lose not only the ability to produce certain speech sounds, but also to distinguish between these sounds.

Articulation

Articulation, often associated with speech production, is how people physically produce speech sounds. For people who speak fluently, articulation is automatic and allows 15 speech sounds to be produced per second. An effective articulation of speech include the following elements – fluency, complexity, accuracy, and comprehensibility. *Fluency: Is the ability to communicate an intended message, or to affect the listener in the way that is intended by the speaker. While accurate use of language is a component in this ability, over-attention to accuracy may actually inhibit the development of fluency. Fluency involves constructing coherent utterances and stretches of speech, to respond and to speak without undue hesitation (limited use of fillers such as uh, er, eh, like, you know). It also involves the ability to use strategies such as simplification and gestures to aid communication. Fluency involves use of relevant information, appropriate vocabulary and

syntax In linguistics, syntax () is the study of how words and morphemes combine to form larger units such as phrases and sentences. Central concerns of syntax include word order, grammatical relations, hierarchical sentence structure ( constituency) ...

. *Complexity: Speech where the message is communicated precisely. Ability to adjust the message or negotiate the control of conversation according to the responses of the listener, and use subordination and clausal forms appropriate per the roles and relationship between the speakers. It includes the use of sociolinguistic knowledge – the skills required to communicate effectively across cultures; the norms, the knowledge of what is appropriate to say in what situations and to whom. *Accuracy: This refers to the use of proper and advanced grammar; subject-verb agreement; word order; and word form (excited/exciting), as well as appropriate word choice in spoken language. It is also the ability to self-correct during discourse, to clarify or modify spoken language for grammatical accuracy. *Comprehensibility: This is the ability to be understood by others, it is related with the sound of the language. There are three components that influence one’s comprehensibility and they are: ''Pronunciation'' – saying the sounds of words correctly; ''Intonation'' – applying proper stress on words and syllables, using rising and falling pitch to indicate questions or statements, using voice to indicate emotion or emphasis, speaking with an appropriate rhythm; and ''Enunciation'' – speaking clearly at an appropriate pace, with effective articulation of words and phrases and appropriate volume.

Development

Before even producing a sound, infants imitate facial expressions and movements.Redford, M. A. (2015). The handbook of speech production. Chichester, West Sussex; Malden, MA : John Wiley & Sons, Ltd, 2015. Around 7 months of age, infants start to experiment with communicative sounds by trying to coordinate producing sound with opening and closing their mouths. Until the first year of life infants cannot produce coherent words, instead they produce a reoccurring

babbling Babbling is a stage in child development and a state in language acquisition during which an infant appears to be experimenting with uttering articulate sounds, but does not yet produce any recognizable words. Babbling begins shortly after birth ...

sound. Babbling allows the infant to experiment with articulating sounds without having to attend to meaning. This repeated babbling starts the initial production of speech. Babbling works with

object permanence Object permanence is the understanding that Physical object, objects continue to Existence, exist even when they cannot be Sense, sensed. This is a fundamental concept studied in the field of developmental psychology, the subfield of psychology ...

and understanding of location to support the networks of our first

lexical Lexical may refer to: Linguistics * Lexical corpus or lexis, a complete set of all words in a language * Lexical item, a basic unit of lexicographical classification * Lexicon, the vocabulary of a person, language, or branch of knowledge * Lex ...

items or words. The infant’s vocabulary growth increases substantially when they are able to understand that objects exist even when they are not present. The first stage of meaningful speech does not occur until around the age of one. This stage is the holophrastic phase.Shaffer, D., Wood, E., & Willoughby, T. (2005). Developmental Psychology Childhood and Adolescence. (2nd Canadian Ed). Nelson. The holistic stage refers to when infant speech consists of one word at a time (i.e. papa). The next stage is the telegraphic phase. In this stage infants can form short sentences (i.e., Daddy sit, or Mommy drink). This typically occurs between the ages of one and a half and two and a half years old. This stage is particularly noteworthy because of the explosive growth of their

. During this stage, infants must select and match stored representations of words to the specific perceptual target word in order to convey meaning or concepts. With enough vocabulary, infants begin to extract sound patterns, and they learn to break down words into

phonological Phonology is the branch of linguistics that studies how languages or dialects systematically organize their sounds or, for sign languages, their constituent parts of signs. The term can also refer specifically to the sound or sign system of a ...

segments, increasing further the number of words they can learn. At this point in an infant's development of speech their lexicon consists of 200 words or more and they are able to understand even more than they can speak. When they reach two and a half years their speech production becomes increasingly complex, particularly in its semantic structure. With a more detailed

semantic network A semantic network, or frame network is a knowledge base that represents semantic relations between concepts in a network. This is often used as a form of knowledge representation. It is a directed or undirected graph consisting of vertices, ...

the infant learns to express a wider range of meanings, helping the infant develop a complex conceptual system of lemmas. Around the age of four or five the child lemmas have a wide range of diversity, this helps them select the right lemma needed to produce correct speech. Reading to infants enhances their lexicon. At this age, children who have been read to and are exposed to more uncommon and complex words have 32 million more words than a child who is

linguistically Linguistics is the scientific study of human language. It is called a scientific study because it entails a comprehensive, systematic, objective, and precise analysis of all aspects of language, particularly its nature and structure. Linguis ...

impoverished.Wolf, M. (2005). Proust and the squid:The story and science of the reading brain, New York, NY. Harper At this age the child should be able to speak in full complete sentences, similar to an adult.