Articulatory phonetics

1. Names of articulators and diagram: click

2. There is a lot of excellent material produced by Peter Ladefoged and available on the web-site associated with his books Vowels and Consonants and A Course in Phonetics (which are strongly recommended). Particularly useful is the "talking" IPA Chart, where you can click on a symbol to hear it pronounced, Click here to try this out.

You can also find a wide variety of useful recordings at the same site: click here

3. Auditory Feedback: when we speak, we normally hear our own voice and this provides feedback to confirm to the brain that the desired output has been produced. If that feedback signal is reduced by load background noise, we speak louder to compensate (the Lombard Effect). If the signal is slightly delayed ('Delayed Auditory Feedback', or DAF), it has a very severe effect on the normal speaker's ability to speak. You can try this for yourself. There is a very good "shareware" program available for downloading (click here). You need to wear big headphones that cut out sound from near your head, otherwise the sound of your own voice gets round the headphone covering and spoils the effect. Surprisingly, people who stutter can in some cases experience a significant improvement in their speech if they are subjected to DAF. For a good account of this, with examples to listen to,  click here. For a short paper on the same subject, click here.