You're welcome, I'm glad your enjoying A:M.
Yes. Basically you directly pose the lips for every sound. The minimum controls would be the jaw up/down, in/out for each corner of the mouth, and some way to curl/pucker the lips for things like "mmm" and "oo". This lets you craft shapes that fit the mood of what is being said and to make better transitions between them.
It is more time consuming.
There's a noted book called "Stop Staring" about lip synch animation. The first edition had some coverage of A:M in it, the current ones don't, but it's the animation concepts that are important rather than the specific modeling advice.