The Phonetics of Speech Production and Medical Research

The production of speech requires the interplay of a number of cognitive and motoric activities, which make it an interesting object of study from both a linguistic and a medical point of view. In this paper, we discuss, first, the features and domain of application of the most used technologies in linguistic research on speech production, focusing on those that have been applied to medicine. Second, we offer an insight into the main results that have been obtained so far in studying dysarthria in Italian Parkinson's Disease, as an example of the interdisciplinary, experimental research at the border between linguistics and medicine.