Gestural representation and Lexical Phonology

Recent work on Articulatory Phonology (Browman & Goldstein 1986, 1989, 1991, 1992a, b) raises a number of questions, specifically involving the phonetics–phonology ‘interface’. One advantage of using Articulatory Phonology (henceforth ArtP), with its basic units of abstract gestures based on articulatory movements, is its ability to link phenomena previously seen as phonological to those which are conventionally described as allophonic, or even lower-level phonetic effects, since ‘gestures are... useful primitives for characterising phonological patterns as well as for analysing the activity of the vocal tract articulators’ (Browman & Goldstein 1991: 313). If both phonetics and phonology could ultimately be cast entirely in gestural terms, the phonetics–phonology interface might effectively cease to exist, at least in terms of units of analysis.