Several traditional phonetic theories are explained and discussed. It is asserted that recent advances in knowledge of speech production and speech perception show that these theories are descriptively inadequate and that physiologic principles may instead structure phonetic feature theories. (Author/RM)

A nasal separator was used to measure the oral and nasal components in the speech of a normal adult Australian population. Results indicated no difference in oral and nasal sound pressure levels for read versus spontaneous speech samples; however, females tended to have a higher nasal component than did males. (Author/TL)