Speech production the larynx that then is modified by the vocal tract into different vowels and consonants. However speech production can occur without the use of the lungs and glottis in alaryngeal speech by using the upper parts of the vocal tract. An example of such alaryngeal speech is Donald Duck talk. The vocal production of speech may be associated with the production of hand gestures 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
Neurocomputational speech processing vocal tract actions (also called articulatory gestures), which need to be activated in order to produce a speech item, their degree of realization and duration, and the temporal organization of all vocal tract actions building up a speech item (for a detailed description of vocal tract actions scores see e.g. Kröger & Birkholz 2007). The detailed realization of each vocal tract action (articulatory gesture) depends on the temporal organization of all vocal tract actions building up a speech item and especially on their temporal overlap. Thus the detailed realization of each vocal tract action within an speech item is specified