linking two lists
I am trying to create an animation curve for Maya. I am doing a project of lip synchronization. I have got 2 lists and I need to link them. Its kind of like a 2-d array I guess.The two lists I have are: 

    Phonemes = ['aa', 'ae', 'ah' 'ay', 'aw','b', 'ch', 'd', 'dh', 'dx', 'eh', 'er','ey', 'f',   'g', 'hh', 'ih', 'iy', 'jh', 'k', 'l', 'm', 'n', 'ng', 'ow', 'oy','p', 'r', 's', 'sh', 't', 'th', 'uh', 'uw', 'v', 'w', 'z']   

    Shapes = ['neutral', 'lower lip under upper teeth', 'lips touch', 'lip spread', 'teeth touch narrow lip', 'jaw open lips touch', 'jaw open lips touch', 'lip round']
   
The first list is the phonemes and second is the lip shapes. For each phoneme there are values for the lip shapes. Mostly its just a single lip shape that is active for one phoneme and the rest of them are zero. But for some phonemes there are 2 or 3 lip shapes active at the same time. I have manually animated them in Maya and I have their blendshape slider values. The values for lip shape varies from 0 to 1. Now I pass an input file which contains a list of phonemes like the following.

    sh iy ' hh eh ' t er ' t aa r k ' s uw t n ' k r iy s ' hh iy ' w aa ' sh w aa dx ' er ' l ih ' y er

The program should go through all of them and set the values of its corresponding lip shapes. Those values should be stored so that further work can be carried out. The single quote represents syllable boundaries. At first the program should go through the phonemes ignoring syllable boundaries and save their lip shape values for all the shapes. Then in the next stage it should start looking inside each boundary.  

So far I only have this but I am blank on how to proceed further.

    def coart(phonemeFile) :
        """ Coarticulation function where forward and backward coarticulation take place a  and parameter values are generated"""
        with open("syllabifiedPhonemes.txt", "r") as pFile :
            for line in tFile :
                line = line.split()
                if line == " ' " :
                    continue

I hope I have explained the question properly. As I am an absolute beginner I really need some help with this. Thank you very much.
   
linking two lists
===

I am trying to create an animation curve for Maya. I am doing a project of lip synchronization. I have got 2 lists and I need to link them. Its kind of like a 2-d array I guess.The two lists I have are: 

    Phonemes = ['aa', 'ae', 'ah' 'ay', 'aw','b', 'ch', 'd', 'dh', 'dx', 'eh', 'er','ey', 'f',   'g', 'hh', 'ih', 'iy', 'jh', 'k', 'l', 'm', 'n', 'ng', 'ow', 'oy','p', 'r', 's', 'sh', 't', 'th', 'uh', 'uw', 'v', 'w', 'z']   

    Shapes = ['neutral', 'lower lip under upper teeth', 'lips touch', 'lip spread', 'teeth touch narrow lip', 'jaw open lips touch', 'jaw open lips touch', 'lip round']
   
The first list is the phonemes and second is the lip shapes. For each phoneme there are values for the lip shapes. Mostly its just a single lip shape that is active for one phoneme and the rest of them are zero. But for some phonemes there are 2 or 3 lip shapes active at the same time. I have manually animated them in Maya and I have their blendshape slider values. The values for lip shape varies from 0 to 1. Now I pass an input file which contains a list of phonemes like the following.

    sh iy ' hh eh ' t er ' t aa r k ' s uw t n ' k r iy s ' hh iy ' w aa ' sh w aa dx ' er ' l ih ' y er

The program should go through all of them and set the values of its corresponding lip shapes. Those values should be stored so that further work can be carried out. The single quote represents syllable boundaries. At first the program should go through the phonemes ignoring syllable boundaries and save their lip shape values for all the shapes. Then in the next stage it should start looking inside each boundary.  

So far I only have this but I am blank on how to proceed further.

    def coart(phonemeFile) :
        """ Coarticulation function where forward and backward coarticulation take place a  and parameter values are generated"""
        with open("syllabifiedPhonemes.txt", "r") as pFile :
            for line in tFile :
                line = line.split()
                if line == " ' " :
                    continue

I hope I have explained the question properly. As I am an absolute beginner I really need some help with this. Thank you very much.
   