Some acoustic and articulatory correlates of phrasal stress in Spanish

All spoken languages show rhythmic patterns. Recent work with a number of different languages (English, Japanese, Mandarin Chinese, and French) suggests that metrically (hierarchically) assigned stress levels of the utterance show strong correlations with the amount of jaw displacement, and corresponding F1 values. This paper examines some articulatory and acoustic correlates of Spanish rhythm; specifically, we ask if there is a correlation between phrasal stress values metrically assigned to each syllable and acoustic/articulatory values. We used video recordings of three Salvadoran Spanish speakers to measure maximum jaw displacement, mean F0, mean intensity, mean duration, and mid-vowel F1 for each vowel in two Spanish sentences. The results show strong correlations between stress and duration, and between stress and F1, but weak correlations between stress and both mean vowel intensity and maximum jaw displacement. We also found weak correlations between jaw displacement and both mean vowel intensity and F1

Caracterización del ritmo del habla usando la coherencia espectral entre el desplazamiento de la mandíbula y la envolvente temporal del habla

Lower modulation rates in the temporal envelope (ENV) of the acoustic signal are believed to be the rhythmic backbone in speech, facilitating speech comprehension in terms of neuronal entrainments at δ- and θ-rates (these rates are comparable to the foot- and syllable-rates phonetically). The jaw plays the role of a carrier articulator regulating mouth opening in a quasi-cyclical way, which correspond to the low-frequency modulations as a physical consequence. This paper describes a method to examine the joint roles of jaw oscillation and ENV in realizing speech rhythm using spectral coherence. Relative powers in the frequency bands corresponding to the δ-and θ-oscillations in the coherence (respectively notated as %δ and %θ) were quantified as one possible way of revealing the amount of concomitant foot- and syllable-level rhythmicities carried by both acoustic and articulatory domains. Two English corpora (mngu0 and MOCHA-TIMIT) were used for the proof of concept. %δ and %θ were regressed on utterance duration for an initial analysis. Results showed that the degrees of foot- and syllable-sized rhythmicities are different and are contingent upon the utterance length.Se piensa que las frecuencias de modulación más bajas en la envolvente temporal (ENV) de la señal acústica constituyen la columna vertebral rítmica del habla, facilitando su comprensión a nivel de enlaces neuronales en términos de los rangos δ y θ (estos rangos son comparables fonéticamente a los rangos de pie métrico y silábicos). La mandíbula funciona como un articulador que regula la abertura de la boca de una manera cuasi cíclica, lo que se corresponde, como una consecuencia física, con las modulaciones de baja frecuencia. Este artículo describe un método para examinar el papel conjunto de la oscilación de la mandíbula y de la envolvente ENV en la producción del ritmo del habla utilizando la coherencia espectral. Las potencias relativas en las bandas de frecuencia correspondientes a las oscilaciones δ y θ en la coherencia (indicadas respectivamente como %δ y %θ) se cuantificaron como un posible modo de revelar la cantidad de ritmicidad concomitante a nivel de pie métrico y de sílaba que los dominios acústicos y articulatorios comportan. Para someter a prueba esta idea, en este estudio se analizaron dos corpus en inglés (mngu0 y MOCHA-TIMIT). Para un primer análisis, se realizó una regresión de %δ y %θ en función de la duración del enunciado. Los resultados mostraron que los grados de ritmicidad del pie y de la sílaba son diferentes y dependen de la longitud del enunciado

Investigating Speech Rate Alignment in Individuals with Traumatic Brain Injury

The alignment of verbal and nonverbal behaviors is important for conversation. Research has shown that interactive behavior alignment is commonly impaired following a traumatic brain injury (TBI), and the ability for an individual with TBI to align their speech rate with their conversational partners can be affected. This non-convergence of speech rates can lead to negative social outcomes, including perceptions of decreased social connectedness and decreased willingness of conversational partners to engage in conversation. Despite these negative outcomes, researchers have yet to discover a therapeutic technique to increase speech rate convergence, and in turn, lead to positive social outcomes during conversation. Additionally, research has specifically focused on speech rate convergence in individuals with moderate-to-severe TBI and not individuals with mild TBI (mTBI). It is currently unclear whether speech rate convergence is also affected in individuals mTBI.Speech entrainment (SE) is a therapeutic tool that involves the real time mimicking of an audiovisual (AV) stimulus. Although this task was originally developed to improve the fluency of speech in individuals with non-fluent aphasia, this study trialed SE with individuals with TBI, as it requires repeated alignment of ones speech rate with anothers.For this study, participants with TBI and mTBI engaged in conversations with a familiar partner before and after engaging in 30 minutes of SE. During the task, participants mimicked AV stimuli presented at various speech rates (unmodified at c. 2 syllables/s and accelerated to c. 3.5/syllables/s and c. 5 syllables/s). After the task, observers rated portions of each conversation on degree of perceived rapport between participants and their conversational partners.Results showed that individuals with mTBI entrained to a greater degree to stimuli compared to the moderate-to-severe TBI group at the slow and medium rates. Additionally, all participants, regardless of TBI severity, demonstrated greater entrainment to the slow rate AV stimuli compared to the medium. The degree of speech rate convergence, however, did not appear to change systematically between pre- and post-treatment conversations. Finally, based on observers ratings, conversations with speech rate convergence were unexpectedly perceived as less natural and less favorable compared to conversations with non-convergence of speech rate

Articulation in time : Some word-initial segments in Swedish

Speech is both dynamic and distinctive at the same time. This implies a certain contradiction which has entertained researchers in phonetics and phonology for decades. The present dissertation assumes that articulation behaves as a function of time, and that we can find phonological structures in the dynamical systems. EMA is used to measure mechanical movements in Swedish speakers. The results show that tonal context affects articulatory coordination. Acceleration seems to divide the movements of the jaw and lips into intervals of postures and active movements. These intervals are affected differently by the tonal context. Furthermore, a bilabial consonant is shorter if the next consonant is also made with the lips. A hypothesis of a correlation between acoustic segment duration and acceleration is presented. The dissertation highlights the importance of time for how speech ultimately sounds. Particularly significant is the combination of articulatory timing and articulatory duration

Subsidia: Tools and Resources for Speech Sciences

Este libro, resultado de la colaboración de investigadores expertos en sus respectivas áreas, pretende ser una ayuda a la comunidad científica en tanto en cuanto recopila y describe una serie de materiales de gran utilidad para seguir avanzando en la investigació

Lexical Stress Realization in Mandarin Second Language Learners of English: An Acoustic and Articulatory Study

This dissertation investigated the acoustic and articulatory correlates of lexical stress in Mandarin second language (L2) learners of English, as well as in first language (L1) speakers. The present study used a minimal pair respective to stress location (e.g., OBject versus obJECT) obtained from a publicly available Mandarin Accented English Electromagnetic articulography corpus dataset. In the acoustic domain, the use of acoustic parameters (duration, intensity, F0, and vowel quality) was measured in stressed and unstressed vowels. In the articulatory domain, the positional information from tongue tip (TT), tongue dorsum (TD), upper lip (UL), lower lip (LL), and jaw (JAW) were retrieved from the concurrent vowel data. Finally, the acoustic and articulatory correlation was computed and compared both within and across groups. The acoustic analysis demonstrated that L2 speakers significantly differentiated the stressed vowels from the unstressed vowels using all suprasegmental cues, while vowel quality was extremely limitedly used in the L2 group. In the articulatory analysis, Mandarin L2 speakers demonstrated the extremely limited lexical stress effect. A significant difference as a function of lexical stress was noted only in the vertical dimension of low-back vowels. The acoustic and articulatory correlation results revealed a relatively weaker correlation in L2 speakers than in L1 speakers. In the L2 group, certain articulators such as TD and the JAW demonstrated a stronger correlation than LL and TT