Why the word should become the central unit of phonetic speech research

Abstract

The purpose of this paper is

(i) to assert that phonetics as speech science needs a fundamentally new theoretical orientation (leading also to a quite new research agenda);
(ii) to argue that this can be most easilyl achieved if the word which to all native and non-native speakers of a language is the most naturally given unit of speech should also be considered the most central unit of speech science;
(iii) to promote the idea that phonetics - taken in this way and in close connection with the other basic speech science, semantics - will become a much more useful discipline in the context of the development of speech technologies for the coming so-called information society; and finally
(iv) to present along with earlier ideas published by the present author a rather complete picture of the phonetic processes which are basic in the production of natural
speech acts.