Speech production is the process by which spoken

Spoken

Spoken is the past tense verbal form of "to speak".Spoken may also refer to:*Spoken , a Christian rock group from Arkansas*Spoken , an album by Spoken...

 words are selected to be produced, have their phonetics formulated and then finally are articulated by the motor system

Motor system

The motor system is the part of the central nervous system that is involved with movement. It consists of the pyramidal and extrapyramidal system....

 in the vocal apparatus. Speech production can be spontaneous such as when a person creates the words of a conversation

Conversation

Conversation is a form of interactive, spontaneous communication between two or more people who are following rules of etiquette.Conversation analysis is a branch of sociology which studies the structure and organization of human interaction, with a more specific focus on conversational...

, reaction such as when they name a picture or read

Reading (process)

Reading is a complex cognitive process of decoding symbols for the intention of constructing or deriving meaning . It is a means of language acquisition, of communication, and of sharing information and ideas...

 aloud a written word

Writing

Writing is the representation of language in a textual medium through the use of a set of signs or symbols . It is distinguished from illustration, such as cave drawing and painting, and non-symbolic preservation of language via non-textual media, such as magnetic tape audio.Writing most likely...

, or a vocal imitation such as in speech repetition

Speech repetition

thumb|250px|right|[[Children]] copy with their own [[mouth]]s the words spoken by the mouths of those around them. This enables them to learn the [[pronunciation]] of words not already in their [[vocabulary]]....

.

Speech production is not the same as language production since language

Language

Language may refer either to the specifically human capacity for acquiring and using complex systems of communication, or to a specific instance of such a system of complex communication...

 can also be produced manually by sign

Sign language

A sign language is a language which, instead of acoustically conveyed sound patterns, uses visually transmitted sign patterns 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...

s.

Faculty

In ordinary fluent conversation

Conversation

Conversation is a form of interactive, spontaneous communication between two or more people who are following rules of etiquette.Conversation analysis is a branch of sociology which studies the structure and organization of human interaction, with a more specific focus on conversational...

 people pronounce each second roughly four syllables, ten or twelve phoneme

Phoneme

In a language or dialect, a phoneme is the smallest segmental unit of sound employed to form meaningful contrasts between utterances....

s and two to three words out of a vocabulary

Vocabulary

A person's vocabulary is the set of words within a language that are familiar to that person. A vocabulary usually develops with age, and serves as a useful and fundamental tool for communication and acquiring knowledge...

 that can contain 10 to 100 thousand words. 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

Frequency list

In computational linguistics, a frequency list is a sorted list of words together with their frequency, where frequency here usually means the number of occurrences in a given corpus...

 or learned early in life or easily imagined are quicker to say than ones that are rarely said, learnt later in life or abstract.

Normally speech is created with pulmonary pressure provided by the lung

Lung

The lung is the essential respiration organ in many air-breathing animals, including most tetrapods, a few fish and a few snails. In mammals and the more complex life forms, the two lungs are located near the backbone on either side of the heart...

s that generates sound by phonation

Phonation

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 definition used among those who study laryngeal anatomy and physiology...

 in the glottis

Glottis

The glottis is defined as the combination of the vocal folds and the space in between the folds .-Function:...

 in the larynx

Larynx

The larynx , commonly called the voice box, is an organ in the neck of amphibians, reptiles and mammals involved in breathing, sound production, and protecting the trachea against food aspiration. It manipulates pitch and volume...

 that then is modified by the vocal tract

Vocal tract

The vocal tract is the cavity in human beings and in animals where sound that is produced at the sound source is filtered....

 into different vowel

Vowel

In phonetics, a vowel is a sound in spoken language, such as English ah! or oh! , 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! , where there is a constriction or closure at some...

s and consonant

Consonant

In articulatory phonetics, a consonant is a speech sound that is articulated with complete or partial closure of the vocal tract. Examples are , pronounced with the lips; , pronounced with the front of the tongue; , pronounced with the back of the tongue; , pronounced in the throat; and ,...

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

Alaryngeal speech

Alaryngeal speech is speech made using sources other than the glottis in the larynx to create voice sound. There are three types: esophageal, buccal and pharyngeal speech. Each of these uses an alternative method of creating speech-like phonation to that normally provided by the vocal cords...

 by using the upper parts of the vocal trait. An example of such alaryngeal speech is Donald Duck talk

Donald Duck talk

Donald Duck talk, officially called buccal speech, is an alaryngeal form of vocalization which uses the inner cheek to produce sound rather than the larynx...

.

The vocal production of speech is usually associated with the production of synchronized hand gestures that act to enhance the comprehensibility of what is being said.

Three stages

The production of spoken language

Spoken language

Spoken language is a form of human 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...

 involves three major levels of processing.

The first is the processes of conceptualization in which the intention

Intention

Intention is an agent's specific purpose in performing an action or series of actions, the end or goal that is aimed at. Outcomes that are unanticipated or unforeseen are known as unintended consequences....

 to create speech links a desired concept to a particular spoken word to be expressed. Here the preverbal intended messages are formulated that specify the concepts to be verbally expressed. This is a competitive process in which an appropriate word is selected among a cohort of candidates.

The second stage is formulation in which the linguistic

Language

Language may refer either to the specifically human capacity for acquiring and using complex systems of communication, or to a specific instance of such a system of complex communication...

 form required for that word's expression is created. This process involves such processes as the generation of a syntactic frame, and phonological encoding which specifies the phonetic form of the intended utterance. At this stage a lemma

Lemma (psycholinguistics)

In psycholinguistics, a lemma is an abstract conceptual form of a word that has been mentally selected for utterance in the early stages of speech production...

 is picked that is the abstract form of a word that lacks any information about the sounds in it (and thus before the word can be pronounced). It contains information concerning only meaning

Meaning (linguistics)

In linguistics, meaning is what is expressed by the writer or speaker, and what is conveyed to the reader or listener, provided that they talk about the same thing . In other words if the object and the name of the object and the concepts in their head are the same...

 and the relation of this word to others in the sentence

Sentence (linguistics)

In the field of linguistics, a sentence is an expression in natural language, and often defined to indicate a grammatical unit consisting of one or more words that generally bear minimal syntactic relation to the words that precede or follow it...

.

The third stage is articulation

Manner of articulation

In linguistics, manner of articulation describes how the tongue, lips, jaw, and other speech organs are involved in making a sound. Often the concept is only used for the production of consonants, even though the movement of the articulars will also greatly alter the resonant properties of the...

 which involves the retrieval of the particular motor phonetics

Phonetics

Phonetics is a branch of linguistics that comprises the study of the sounds of human speech, or—in the case of sign languages—the equivalent aspects of sign. It is concerned with the physical properties of speech sounds or signs : their physiological production, acoustic properties, auditory...

 of a word and the motor coordination

Motor coordination

thumb|right|Motor coordination is shown in this animated sequence by [[Eadweard Muybridge]] of himself throwing a diskMotor coordination is the combination of body movements created with the kinematic and kinetic parameters that result in intended actions. Such movements usually smoothly and...

 of appropriate phonation

Phonation

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 definition used among those who study laryngeal anatomy and physiology...

 and articulation by the lungs, glottis, larynx, tongue

Tongue

The tongue is a muscular hydrostat on the floors of the mouths of most vertebrates which manipulates food for mastication. It is the primary organ of taste , as much of the upper surface of the tongue is covered in papillae and taste buds. It is sensitive and kept moist by saliva, and is richly...

, lip

Lip

Lips are a visible body part at the mouth of humans and many animals. Lips are soft, movable, and serve as the opening for food intake and in the articulation of sound and speech...

s, jaw

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 serving to open and close it and is part of the body plan of...

, and other parts of the vocal apparatus.

Neuroscience

Speech production motor control

Motor control

Motor control are information processing related activities carried out by the central nervous system that organize the musculoskeletal system to create coordinated movements and skilled actions...

 in right handers depends mostly upon areas in the left cerebral hemisphere

Cerebral hemisphere

A cerebral hemisphere is one of the two regions of the eutherian brain that are delineated by the median plane, . The brain can thus be described as being divided into left and right cerebral hemispheres. Each of these hemispheres has an outer layer of grey matter called the cerebral cortex that is...

. These areas include the bilateral supplementary motor area

Supplementary motor area

The supplementary motor area is a part of the sensorimotor cerebral cortex . It was included, on purely cytoarchitectonic arguments, in area 6 of Brodmann and the Vogts...

, the left posterior inferior frontal gyrus

Inferior frontal gyrus

The inferior frontal gyrus is a gyrus of the frontal lobe . It is labelled gyrus frontalis inferior, its Latin name...

, the left insula

Insular cortex

In each hemisphere of the mammalian brain the insular cortex is a portion of the cerebral cortex folded deep within the lateral sulcus between the temporal lobe and the frontal lobe. The cortical area overlying it towards the lateral surface of the brain is the operculum...

, the left Primary motor cortex

Primary motor cortex

The primary motor cortex is a brain region that in humans is located in the posterior portion of the frontal lobe. Itworks in association with pre-motor areas to plan and execute movements. M1 contains large neurons known as Betz cells, which send long axons down the spinal cord to synapse onto...

 and temporal cortex. There are also subcortical areas involved such as the basal ganglia

Basal ganglia

The basal ganglia are a group of nuclei of varied origin in the brains of vertebrates that act as a cohesive functional unit. They are situated at the base of the forebrain and are strongly connected with the cerebral cortex, thalamus and other brain areas...

 and cerebellum

Cerebellum

The cerebellum is a region of the brain that plays an important role in motor control. It may also be involved in some cognitive functions such as attention and language, and in regulating fear and pleasure responses, but its movement-related functions are the most solidly established...

. 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:

• stuttering
  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, and involuntary silent pauses or blocks in which the stutterer is unable to produce sounds...
  
  
• Lisp
  Lisp
  A lisp is a speech impediment, historically also known as sigmatism. Stereotypically, people with a lisp are unable to pronounce sibilants , and replace them with interdentals , though there are actually several kinds of lisp...
  
  
• Speech sound disorder
  Speech sound disorder
  Speech sound disorders are speech disorders in which some speech sounds in a child's native language are either not produced, not produced correctly, or are not used correctly.- General characteristics :...
  
  
• Infantile speech
  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 the substitution of standard speech sounds...
  
  

• speech error
  Speech error
  Speech errors, commonly referred to as slips of the tongue , are conscious or unconscious deviations from the apparently intended form of an utterance. They can be subdivided into spontaneously and inadvertently produced speech errors and intentionally produced word-plays or puns...
  
  
• Spoonerism
  Spoonerism
  A spoonerism is an error in speech or deliberate play on words in which corresponding consonants, vowels, or morphemes are switched . It is named after the Reverend William Archibald Spooner , Warden of New College, Oxford, who was notoriously prone to this tendency...
  
  
• Malapropism
  Malapropism
  A malapropism is an act of misusing or the habitual misuse of similar sounding words, especially with humorous results. An example is Yogi Berra's statement: "Texas has a lot of electrical votes," rather than "electoral votes".-Etymology:...
  
  
• Mispronunciation
  Mispronunciation
  Mispronunciation is defined by the Oxford English Dictionary as "incorrect or inaccurate pronunciation". 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...
  
  

• aphasia
  Aphasia
  Aphasia is an impairment of language ability. This class of language disorder ranges from having difficulty remembering words to being completely unable to speak, read, or write....
  
  
• Aphasiology
  Aphasiology
  Aphasiology is the study of linguistic problems resulting from brain damage. It is also the name of a scientific journal covering the area.These specific deficits, termed aphasias, may be defined as impairments of language production or comprehension that cannot be attributed to trivial causes...
  
  
• Speech disorder
  Speech disorder
  Speech disorders or speech impediments are a type of communication disorders where 'normal' speech is disrupted. This can mean stuttering, lisps, etc. Someone who is unable to speak due to a speech disorder is considered mute.-Classification:...
  
  
• Dysnomia disorder
• Aprosodia
  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 be the result of damage of some form to the...
  
  
• Dysprosody
  Dysprosody
  Dysprosody, which is also known as pseudo-foreign dialect syndrome, refers to a disorder in which one or more of the prosodic functions are either compromised or eliminated completely....