| Abstract | In several recent papers, Fowler and her colleagues (Fowler, 1988; Vatikiotis-Bateson & Fowler, 1998; Varya & Fowler, 1992) have advanced an intriguing hypothesis - that there is a general “winding down” in speech that affects the upper articulators (e.g. the jaw and lips), in addition to fundamental frequency, acoustic amplitude, and subglottal pressure. The present study extends to another articulatory subsystem, the velum, the hypothesis that declination is a general phenomenon of speech production. |