Articulation in brass playing : the tongue - friend or foe?

Bibliography: leaves 97-99.This dissertation attempts to demonstrate the role the tongue plays in articulation in brass playing. It briefly examines oral anatomy, physiology and theories on motor learning, and describes the tongue's position in producing English speech sounds. It shows how these positions are used to teach different articulation techniques on the various brass instruments. Articulation styles and (tonguing) exercises, which could aid in the improvement of tongue articulation, are highlighted. It is hoped that these highlights will add insight for both present and future brass teachers

Vocalisations Evidence from Germanic

A vocalisation may be described as a historical linguistic change where a sound which is formerly consonantal within a language becomes pronounced as a vowel. Although vocalisations have occurred sporadically in many languages they are particularly prevalent in the history of Germanic languages and have affected sounds from all places of articulation. This study will address two main questions. The first is why vocalisations happen so regularly in Germanic languages in comparison with other language families. The second is what exactly happens in the vocalisation process. For the first question there will be a discussion of the concept of ‘drift’ where related languages undergo similar changes independently and this will therefore describe the features of the earliest Germanic languages which have been the basis for later changes. The second question will include a comprehensive presentation of vocalisations which have occurred in Germanic languages with a description of underlying features in each of the sounds which have vocalised. When considering phonological changes a degree of phonetic information must necessarily be included which may be irrelevant synchronically, but forms the basis of the change diachronically. A phonological representation of vocalisations must therefore address how best to display the phonological information whilst allowing for the inclusion of relevant diachronic phonetic information. Vocalisations involve a small articulatory change, but using a model which describes vowels and consonants with separate terminology would conceal the subtleness of change in a vocalisation. The model presented here has therefore been designed to unite the descriptions of consonants and vowels to better demonstrate this change whilst allowing for relevant phonetic information to be included

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

Categoriality and continuity in prosodic prominence

Prosody has been characterised as a "half-tamed savage" being shaped by both discrete, categorical aspects as well as gradient, continuous phenomena. This book is concerned with the relation of the "wild" and the "tamed" sides of prosodic prominence. It reviews problems that arise from a strict separation of categorical and continuous representations in models of phonetics and phonology, and it explores the potential role of descriptions aimed at reconciling the two domains. In doing so, the book offers an introduction to dynamical systems, a framework that has been studied extensively in the last decades to model speech production and perception. The reported acoustic and articulatory data presented in this book show that categorical and continuous modulations used to enhance prosodic prominence are deeply intertwined and even exhibit a kind of symbiosis. A multi-dimensional dynamical model of prosodic prominence is sketched, based on the empirical data, combining tonal and articulatory aspects of prosodic focus marking. The model demonstrates how categorical and continuous aspects can be inte- grated in a joint theoretical treatment that overcomes a strict separation of phonetics and phonology

Data-Driven Critical Tract Variable Determination for European Portuguese

Technologies, such as real-time magnetic resonance (RT-MRI), can provide valuable information to evolve our understanding of the static and dynamic aspects of speech by contributing to the determination of which articulators are essential (critical) in producing specific sounds and how (gestures). While a visual analysis and comparison of imaging data or vocal tract profiles can already provide relevant findings, the sheer amount of available data demands and can strongly profit from unsupervised data-driven approaches. Recent work, in this regard, has asserted the possibility of determining critical articulators from RT-MRI data by considering a representation of vocal tract configurations based on landmarks placed on the tongue, lips, and velum, yielding meaningful results for European Portuguese (EP). Advancing this previous work to obtain a characterization of EP sounds grounded on Articulatory Phonology, important to explore critical gestures and advance, for example, articulatory speech synthesis, entails the consideration of a novel set of tract variables. To this end, this article explores critical variable determination considering a vocal tract representation aligned with Articulatory Phonology and the Task Dynamics framework. The overall results, obtained considering data for three EP speakers, show the applicability of this approach and are consistent with existing descriptions of EP sounds

Towards a clinical assessment of acquired speech dyspraxia.

No standardised assessment exists for the recognition and quantification of acquired speech dyspraxia (also called apraxia of speech, AS). This thesis aims to work towards development of such an assessment based on perceptual features. Review of previous features claimed to characterise AS and differentiate it from other acquired pronunciation problems (dysarthrias; phonemic paraphasia - PP) has proved negative. Reasons for this have been explored. A reconceptualisation of AS is attempted based on physical studies of AS, PP and the dysarthrias; their position and relationship within coalitional models of speech production; by comparison with normal action control and other dyspraxias. Contrary to the view of many it is concluded that AS and PP are dyspraxias (albeit different types). However, due to the interactive nature of speech-language production and behaviour of the vocal tract as a functional whole AS is unlikely to be distinguishable in an absolute fashion based on single speech characteristics. Rather it is predicted that pronunciation disordered groups will differ relatively on total error profiles and susceptibility to associated effects (variability; propositionality; struggle; length-complexity; latency-utterance times). Using a prototype battery and refined error transcription and analysis procedures a series of studies test predictions on three groups: spastic dysarthrics (n = 6) AS and PP without (n = 12) and with (n = 12) dysphasia. The main conclusions do not support the error profile hypotheses in any straightforward manner. Length-complexity effects and latency-utterance times fail to consistently separate groups. Variability, propositionality and struggle proved the most reliable indicators. Error profiles remain the closest indicators of speakers' intelligibility and therapeutic goals. The thesis argues for a single case approach to differential diagnosis and alternative statistical analyses to capture individual and group differences. Suggestions for changes to the prototype clinical battery and data management to effect optimal speaker differentiation conclude the work

Relation between acoustic and articulatory dimensions of speech sounds

In their daily communication, speakers produce speech by pushing a controlled air stream past their vocal folds and through a vocal tract configuration formed by a set of articulators which ultimately results in a certain acoustic output. In this sense, speech and, specifically, speech sounds can be understood as a relation between articulatory and acoustic dimensions. This idea is supported by more recent neuroimaging results which suggest that sensory representations of speech sounds are stored across auditory and somatosensory cortices and are characterized by neural auditory-somatosensory mappings. The overall aim of the current dissertation is to improve our understanding of the functional nature of this relation. To this end, this thesis investigates the influence of a stronger linguo-palatal contact on speakers’ ability to employ multiple concurrent compensatory strategies during production of vowels and fricatives. During the data analysis, speakers’ individual as well as average compensatory behavior is investigated by means of generalized additive mixed models (GAMM) and a supervised classification algorithm (random forest). A framework is then developed that allows to estimate the extent of spectral adaptations in vowels and fricatives and to draw a direct comparison between these sounds. The experimental results are discussed in the context of current speech production theories and agree with the overall idea that speech sounds are perceptuo-motor units comprising of articulatory movements which are shaped by perceptual properties and selected for their functional value for communication.Sprecher produzieren Sprachlaute, indem sie einen kontrollierten Luftstrom vorbei an ihren Stimmlippen und durch eine artikulatorische Konfiguration führen, was letztendlich in einem bestimmten akustischen Ergebnis mündet. In diesem Sinne können Sprachlaute als Relationen zwischen der artikulatorischen und der akustischen Dimension verstanden werden. Diese allgemeine Vorstellung wird durch die Ergebnisse der Neuroforschung gestützt, die darauf hindeuten, dass sensorische Repräsentationen von Sprachlauten sowohl im auditiven als auch somatosensorischen Cortex gespeichert werden und sich durch neuronale auditiv-somatosensorische Zuordnungen auszeichnen. Das übergeordnete Ziel der vorliegenden Dissertation ist es, unser Verständnis von der Funktionsweise dieser Relationen zu verbessern. Dazu untersucht die Arbeit den Einfluss eines stärkeren linguo-palatalen Kontakts auf die Fähigkeit der Sprecher, mehrere Kompensationsstrategien bei der Produktion von Vokalen und Frikativen gleichzeitig anzuwenden. Bei der Datenanalyse wird sowohl das individuelle als auch das durchschnittliche Kompensationsverhalten der Sprecher mittels verallgemeinerter additiver gemischter Modelle (GAMM) sowie eines überwachten Klassifizierungsalgorithmus (Random Forest) untersucht. Dabei wird ein Rahmenwerk entwickelt, das erlaubt das Ausmaß der spektralen Anpassungen bei Vokalen und Frikativen zu untersuchen und miteinander zu vergleichen. Die experimentellen Ergebnisse werden im Rahmen aktueller Sprachproduktionstheorien diskutiert und stimmen insgesamt mit der Vorstellung überein, dass Sprachlaute perzeptuell-motorische Einheiten sind, denen Artikulationsbewegungen zu Grunde liegen, die durch perzeptuelle Eigenschaften beeinflusst und geformt werden