AbstractThe concept of coarticulation, i.e. the apparent variation of segments due to the influence of adjacent or nearby segments, is central to almost any area in phonetic research. The following text considers the 'origin' of this concept from three different perspectives. In the first section the reasons why coarticulation exists in speech are outlined and the phenomenon and its underlying assumptions are presented in more detail. The second part of the paper deals with the history of the concept. Firstly, an overview of the origin of coarticulation is given from a historical point of view. Secondly, the adoption of the concept of coarticulation as the basis of a major research paradigm in speech production is discussed. The latter includes a summary of the main models and experimental results presented since the late 1960s. In the third section, finally, the ontogenetic origin, i.e. the way in which children acquire coarticulatory behaviour, is considered
