Investigating Unscripted Speech: Implications for Phonetics and Phonology

Abstract This paper looks at patterns of reduction and elaboration in speech production, taking the phenomenon of plosive-related glottalization in German spontaneous speech, on the basis of the ‘Kiel Corpus’, as its point of departure, and proposes general principles of human speech to explain them. This is followed by an enquiry into the nature of a production-perception link, based on complementary data from perceptual experiments. A hypothesis is put forward as to how listeners cope with the enormous phonetic variability of spoken language and how this ability may be acquired. Finally, the need for a new paradigm of phonetic analysis and phonological systematization is stressed, as a prerequisite to dealing adequately and in an insightful way with the production and perception of spontaneous speech.