Figure 1 Lips Teeth Alveolar ridge Larynx Tongue Soft palate/velum Hard palate Pharynx Epiglottis Vocal cords

Articulators are organs involved in the process of producing speech sounds . The articulators are classified into two major categories. Those are the active and the passive articulators. Active articulator is the articulators like lower lip, tongue and jaw that can move freely and does all or most of the moving during a speech gesture. Passive articulator is the articulators like the upper lip, upper teeth, the back wall of a pharynx and various parts of the upper surface of the oral cavity. that make no or little movement during a speech gesture. Figure 1 below shows the articulators above the larynx involved in producing speech sounds. 2

Larynx is a structure at the top of the trachea. It is also known as the voice box. It contains two small elastic tissues known as vocal cords . Sound is produced when the opening of the vocal cords known as epiglottis were expanded and narrowed when we breathe in and out. The palate is divided into two parts. The hard and the soft palate. Because it is the roof of the mouth, so it separates the oral and the nasal cavity. The hard palate which is a concave part of the roof of the mouth forms the central part of the roof and the soft palate is extended from the hard palate. The soft palate is movable. At the end of the soft palate is the uvula. When the uvula is lowered, the nasal sounds such as ( /m, n, / ) are produced. When it is raised, the air passes out through the oral cavity and the oral sounds ( /p,t,k,s/ ) are produced. Tongue is an active articulator and plays an important role in speech production. It has four parts, the tip, blade,front and back. It can move to different places and be in different shapes. Most of the vowel sounds are produced with the help from the tongue and they differ from each other because of the position of the tongue. The tip of the tongue produced ( /t,d,z/ ). The blade produced ( /t, d, / ). The front produced ( /j/ ) and the back produced ( /k,g/ ) sounds. The protrusion at the front of the mouth is called lips. The bilabial sounds such as(/p,b,m/) are produced when the airflow is constricted between the upper and lower lips. When the lips brought into contact with the teeth, sounds they produced are called labiodental sounds and when rounded they produced vowel sounds. Teeth are the passive articulators and they are located on both the upper and lower jaw. When the upper and lower teeth are brought together, the can obstruct the airflow and resulting in hissing sound. Sounds produced involving the teeth are dental sounds. The surface of the alveolar ridge is covered with little ridges and located between the upper teeth and the hard palate. Alveolar sounds such as ( / s, t, d , z / ) are produced when the tip of the tongue touches the alveolar ridge.