Byrd, D., S. Lee and R. Campos-Astorkiza. 2008. “Phrase boundary effects on the temporal kinematics of sequential tongue tip consonants" (original) (raw)

Phrase boundary effects on the temporal kinematics of sequential tongue tip consonants

The Journal of the Acoustical Society of America, 2008

This study evaluates the effects of phrase boundaries on the intra- and intergestural kinematic characteristics of blended gestures, i.e., overlapping gestures produced with a single articulator. The sequences examined are the juncture geminate [d(#)d], the sequence [d(#)z], and, for comparison, the singleton tongue tip gesture in [d(#)b]. This allows the investigation of the process of gestural aggregation [Munhall, K. G., and Löfqvist, A. (1992). “Gestural aggregation in speech: laryngeal gestures,” J. Phonetics 20, 93–110] and the manner in which it is affected by prosodic structure. Juncture geminates are predicted to be affected by prosodic boundaries in the same way as other gestures; that is, they should display prosodic lengthening and lesser overlap across a boundary. Articulatory prosodic lengthening is also investigated using a signal alignment method of the functional data analysis framework [Ramsay, J. O., and Silverman, B. W. (2005). Functional Data Analysis, 2nd ed. (...

Temporal coordination of articulatory gestures in consonant clusters and sequences of consonants

2009

In the framework of Articulatory Phonology, linguistic structures are represented in terms of coordinated articulatory gestures that are organized into a gestural score. Syllable structure can be seen as residing in the phasing of the dynamical gestures. The present study investigates the temporal coordination and cohesion of some articulatory gestures as a function of their respective configuration. It looks at

Are gesture and prosodic prominences always coordinated? Evidence from perception and production

This study explores the phonological coordination between gesture and speech by addressing two main questions: (1) Do speakers perceive the misalignment between gesture prominence and prosodic prominence? (2) Does this perception depend on the semantic information conveyed by gesture and speech modalities in production? Two experiments were carried out. Experiment 1 tested the speakers' sensitivity of stimuli in which the pointing gesture prominence coincided or not with the stressed syllable in trochees and iambs. Results revealed that unsynchronized combinations were less acceptable than synchronized combinations, but that unsynchronized trochees (with the gesture apex at the posttonic syllable) were frequently accepted, while unsynchronized iambs (with the apex at the pre-tonic syllable) were rejected. Experiment 2 tested how speakers synchronize gestures with speech in a pointing task. Results revealed that when gesture is complementary to speech the gesture prominence frequently occurs after the speech prominence and is uttered as two different speech acts. We conclude that the semantic coordination of gesture and speech needs to be taken into account when studying the temporal coordination of both modalities.

The timing of articulatory gestures: Evidence for relational invariants

The Journal of the Acoustical Society of America, 1984

In this article, we examine the effects of changing speaking rate and syllable stress on the spacetime structure of articulatory gestures. Lip and jaw movements of four subjects were monitored during production of selected bisyllabic utterances in which stress and rate were orthogonally varied. Analysis of the relative timing of articulatory movements revealed that the time of onset of gestures specific to consonant articulation was tightly linked to the timing of gestures specific to the flanking vowels. The observed temporal stability was independent of large variations in displacement, duration, and velocity of individual gestures. The kinematic results are in close agreement with our previously reported EMG findings lB. Tuller et al., J. Exp. Psychol. 8, 460472 (1982)] and together provide evidence for relational invariants in articulation.

Crosslinguistic cineradiographic studies of the temporal coordination of speech gestures

Working Papers 40, 251-263, Dept. of Linguistics, University of Lund, Sweden, 1993

The research programme outlined here is devoted to the analysis of speech gestures from 7 X-ray motion films of speech from 5 different languages (Southern Swedish, British English, West Greenlandic Eskimo, Cairo Arabic and Bulgarian). The issues specifically addressed are (i) the methodology and feasibility of analysing and identifying individual gestures in these languages and assigning them to their respective phonemes, (ii) the organization of movement in these languages, (iii) an evaluation of the observed patterns of temporal coordination in these languages in the light of coarticulation models, (iv) the relation of coarticulation to assimilation, especially the assimilation of vowels to uvular and pharyngeal consonants in Eskimo, vowels to emphatic consonants in Arabic and palatovelar consonants to palatal vowels in Swedish.

Strength and Structure: Coupling Tones with Oral Constriction Gestures

Interspeech 2019, 2019

According to the segmental anchor hypothesis within the Autosegmental-Metrical approach, tones are aligned with segmental boundaries of consonant and vowels in the acoustic domain. In prenuclear rising pitch accents (LH*), the rise is assumed to occur in the vicinity of the accented syllable it is phonologically associated with. However, there are differences in the alignment patterns within and across languages that cannot be captured within the AM approach. In the present study, we investigate the coordination of tonal and oral constriction gestures within Articulatory Phonology. Therefore, we model the coordination of prenuclear LH* pitch accents in Catalan, Northern and Southern German with respect to syllable production on the basis of recordings with a 2D electromagnetic articulography. We provide an extended coupled oscillators model that allows for balanced and imbalanced coupling strengths. Based on examples, we show that the observed differences in alignment patterns for prenuclear rising pitch accents can be modelled with the same underlying coordinative structures/coupling modes for vocalic and tonal gestures and that surface differences arise from gradient variation in coupling strengths. Index Terms: dynamical systems, tonal alignment, tonal gestures, oral constriction gestures, computational model of variability, imbalanced coupling 1.2. Coordination of tonal and oral gestures in AP Articulatory Phonology [9, 10] decomposes speech into a set of potentially overlapping units, articulatory gestures. The temporal organisation of gestures can be modelled by a

Coordination of lingual and mandibular gestures for different manners of articulation

Proceedings of the …, 2003

In Articulatory Phonology the jaw is not controlled individually but serves as an additional articulator to achieve the primary constriction. In this study the timing of jaw and tongue tip gestures for the coronal consonants / , , , , , / is analysed by means of EMMA. The findings suggest that the tasks of the jaw for the fricatives are to provide a second noise source and to stabilise the tongue position (more pronounced for /s/). For the voiceless stop, the speakers seem to aim at a high jaw position for producing a prominent burst. For /l/ a low jaw position is essential for avoiding lateral contact and for the apical articulation of this sound.

Effects of perturbation and prosody on the coordination of speech and gesture

Speech Communication, 2014

The temporal alignment of speech and gesture is widely acknowledged as primary evidence of the integration of spoken language and gesture systems. Yet there is a disconnect between the lack of experimental research on the variables that affect the temporal relationship of speech and gesture and the overwhelming acceptance that speech and gesture are temporally coordinated. Furthermore, the mechanism of the temporal coordination of speech and gesture is poorly represented. Recent experimental research suggests that gestures overlap prosodically prominent points in the speech stream, though the effects of other variables such as perturbation of speech are not yet studied in a controlled paradigm. The purpose of the present investigation was to further investigate the mechanism of this interaction according to a dynamic systems framework. Fifteen typical young adults completed a task that elicited the production of contrastive prosodic stress on different syllable positions with and without delayed auditory feedback while pointing to corresponding pictures. The coordination of deictic gestures and spoken language was examined as a function of perturbation, prosody, and position of the target syllable. Results indicated that the temporal parameters of gesture were affected by all three variables. The findings suggest that speech and gesture may be coordinated due to internal pulse-based temporal entrainment of the two motor systems.

Intragestural dynamics of multiple prosodic boundaries

Journal of Phonetics, 1998

Recent work has demonstrated that temporal lengthening of articulatory gestures adjacent to an intonational phrase boundary can be interpreted as resulting from a lower underlying gestural stiffness. Magnetometer data from three subjects were examined to determine whether multiple levels of prosodic boundaries can be distinguished in the spatio-temporal patterning of articulation and whether these patterns are consistent with the lowered gestural stiffness account. Eighty tokens were recorded of a /CVCVCCVCV/ sequence with five differing boundary conditions intended to elicit multiple prosodic boundaries. Magnitude and duration of each consonantal closing and opening gesture, and the temporal latency between consonants were determined. Three levels of interconsonant latency in the /CVCCV/ portion of the utterance can be statistically differentiated. These differences result from lengthening of postboundary closing movements and, to a lesser extent, the preboundary opening movements. Concomitant spatial changes are discussed. The kinematic data are used to model the intragestural dynamics of boundary-adjacent lengthening. This modeling suggests that although lowered gestural stiffness is the main source of lengthening, another parameter-a rise-time for gestural activation-is also necessary. Speaker-specific differences in dynamics are accounted for by corresponding differences in the manner in which rise-time varies with stiffness.