Ultrasound Tongue Imaging in Second Language Learning

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Ultrazvočni pogled na artikulacijo slovenskih samoglasnikov

Dosedanji opisi slovenskih samoglasnikov so temeljili večinoma na akustičnih lastnostih, predvsem na formantih in trajanju. V prispevku je predstavljena artikulacijska analiza slovenskih samoglasnikov, opravljena s pomočjo ultrazvočnega snemanja jezika. Analiza petih govorcev potrjuje obstoj osmih samoglasnikov, ki se ne razlikujejo v trajanju, ter opazne razlike med govorci in znotraj njih.Descriptions of Slovene vowels have been based predominantly on the acoustic properties, mainly formants and duration. The paper presents an articulatory analysis of Slovene vowels using ultrasound tongue imaging. The analysis of five speakers confirms the existence of eight vowels, which do not differ in duration, and notable differences between and within speakers

Xumi (part 2): Upper Xumi, the variety of the upper reaches of the Shuiluo river

International audienceThis article is a detailed phonetic-phonological sketch of the variety of the Xumi language that is spoken in the upper reaches of the Shuiluo River in Shuiluo Township (Sichuan, People's Republic of China), accompanied by sound files

The effectiveness of real-time ultrasound visual feedback on tongue movements in L2 pronunciation training

International audienceThe purpose of this study was to test the usability of ultrasound as a visual feedback tool in L2 pronunciation training. Six Japanese-speaking learners, aged 28–33 years, participating in a course in French phonetics for L2 learners, took part in the study. Four of them received three individual 45-minute lessons of ultrasound pronunciation training. The other two participants did not. Articulatory and acoustic data of French isolated /y/ and /u/ and Japanese [ɯ] were recorded before and after the ultrasound training, as well as two months later for the learners receiving the training. The analysis of the articulatory data revealed that three speakers with ultrasound feedback improved in the production of the French vowels, the contrast between them, as well as the contrast between the two French vowels and the Japanese [ɯ], suggesting that ultrasound may be a useful tool in second language pronunciation learning

Effect of Domain Initial Strengthening on Vowel Height and Backness Contrasts in French: Acoustic and Ultrasound Data

International audiencePurpose: Phonetic variation due to domain initial strengthening was investigated with respect to the acoustic and articulatory distinctiveness of vowels within a subset of the French oral vowel system /i, e, ɛ, a, o, u/, organized along 4 degrees of height for the front vowels and 2 degrees of backness at the close and midclose height levels. Method: Acoustic and lingual ultrasound data were examined to characterize the production of vowels in intonational phrase initial position, compared with intonational phrase medial position, for 4 speakers. Results: Formant values and estimates of lingual constriction location and degree differed according to the prosodic position independent of vowel duration, with a higher F1 for /a/, a higher F2 for /ɛ/, a backer constriction for /o/ and /a/ but a fronter constriction for /ɛ/, and a narrower constriction for /e, ɛ, u, o/ but a wider constriction for /a/. For most speakers, these variations enlarge the acoustic and/or articulatory distance between members of the pairs /e-ɛ/, /ɛ-a/, /u-o/, /i-u/, and /e-o/ but reduce the distinction within the pair /i-e/. Conclusions: These changes in intonational phrase initial position are vowel dependent and frequently contribute to augmenting the phonetic distinctiveness between vowels contrasting along the height and backness dimension

Contribution of ultrasound visualisation to improving the production of the French /y/-/u / contrast by four Japanese learners

The goal of our study is to test if ultrasound visualisation serves as a useful feedback tool in helping Japanese learners of French to better produce the phonemic contrast /y /- /u/

Exploring the use of ultrasound visual feedback in the classroom: a pilot study on the acquisition of selected English vowel contrasts by French learners.

International audienceUltrasound imaging can provide visualization of the major part of the tongue, a difficult-to-see articulator involved in the production of most speech sounds. Within the past decade, there has been a growing body of evidence to support the application of ultrasound in the field of L2 research and pedagogy (Gick et al., 2008). Typically, the existing literature examines the effect of ultrasound training on improving the pronunciation of a difficult sound production by using a series of complex training sessions either individually or in small groups (Tsui, 2012).In the present study, we aim to explore whether it is feasible to use ultrasound visual feedback also in a classroom setting and to test its effectiveness in facilitating speech sound remediation when learners are only exposed to a series of short-time training interventions. The experiment was carried out over one semester at the English department of the University of Paris 3, using a Seemore PI USB-powered ultrasound system. The participants were seven French first year undergraduate students in English with a CEFR level of either B1 or B2.The relevant English sound productions were the contrasts between the two high front vowels /iː/ and /ɪ/, and the front open vowel /æ/ and the central open vowel /ʌ/. Both oppositions are known to be problematic for French learners (Flege, 1995) as the French vowel inventory has only one unrounded high front vowel /i/ and one open front/central vowel /a/. All participants were recorded at beginning (pre-test) and two weeks after the end of the semester (post-test) in a reading task which included 10 repetitions of the target words beat, bit, bat and butt in carrier sentences as well as one recording of the speech accent archive text Please call Stella. Each speaker also recorded 10 repetitions of French control sentences with comparative test items. Each participant received a ten minute ultrasound training session during regular language laboratory classes on a fortnightly basis, five sessions in total. The students worked in pairs and the training consisted of a discussion to incorporate explicit awareness of the tongue movements associated with the target sounds and repeated practice of the vowels, both in isolation and in CVC syllables. For two of the speakers, we carried out an additional pre- and post-recording in one of the session in order to evaluate the possible immediate impact of the ultrasound coaching on the pronunciation performance. All acoustic recordings were subsequently semi-automatically aligned using the WebMAUS system and the first three formants of the target sounds were extracted using PRAAT. We are going to present the results of the pre- and post-recordings for all speakers, focusing on speaker- and vowel-specific differences, and will discuss the various advantages, problems and pedagogical implications likely to be encountered when using visual articulatory ultrasound feedback in the classroom. ReferencesFlege, J.E. (1995). Second language speech learning: Theory, findings, and problems. In W. Strange, Speech perception and linguistic experience: Issues in cross-language research, pp. 233-277. Baltimore: York Press.Gick, B., Bernhardt, B.M., Bacsfalvi, P. & Wilson, I. (2008). In J. Hansen & M. Zampini (eds.) Phonology and Second Language Acquisition. Ch. 11, pp. 309-322. Amsterdam: John Benjamins.Tsui, H. M. (2012). Ultrasound speech training for Japanese adults learning English as a second language. Unpublished MSc thesis, University of British Columbia. Retrieved from enunciate.arts.ubc.ca/research-and-case-studies/other-research/

Variation in the production of French vowels: physiological constraints and communicatives demands

Speech production is known to vary according to speaking style. One possible explanation for segmental reduction in spontaneous speech is that speakers adapt their pronunciation to the amount of contextual information available and/or to the communicative need of the production situation (Lindblom 1990, Meunier et al. 2005). The objective of our study is to further investigate the ability shown by speakers to adapt their speech to specific production situations, by comparing the acoustic realization of French oral vowels in a reading task vs. in spontaneous productions. Two populations are compared. The first population includes 10 healthy French speakers, for which we expect an adaptation to the different communicative demands in the two speech conditions. The second population includes 28 speakers with dysarthria due to Parkinson's disease (8), Amyotrophic Lateral Sclerosis (12), and cerebellar ataxia (8). In this population, vowel production is affected by strong physiological constraints but it is unknown whether these constraints impede the speaker ability to adapt to communicative demand. It is also unknown how the patterns of variation in healthy speech, which are commonly described as vowel reduction, can be compared to the reductions that are primarily conditioned by motoric restrictions in dysarthric speech. To answer these two questions, the acoustic realization of the French oral vowels /i, e, a, o, u/ produced by both populations in the two speech conditions are compared using the same set of acoustic metrics. Those metrics (Fougeron & Audibert 2011) are based on simple F1 and F2 formant measurements, and are meant to capture variation in many possible dimensions, such as changes in articulator mobility/displacements (size of the vowel space, displacement in F1 or in F2 dimension), changes in target stability (within category variability), and changes affecting linguistic contrast in the system (overlap between categories, centralization of vowel targets). Preliminary results on the ALS speakers show that despite large inter-speaker variability, the dysarthric population does not pattern as the healthy population: in spontaneous speech, they do not show a systematic reduction of their acoustic space, nor a centralization of acoustic target in F1 dimension, nor vowel shortening. Results on the other two other dysarthic populations will be presented at the conference

Comparing the effect of pronunciation and ultrasound trainings to pronunciation training only for the improvement of the production of the French /y/-/u/ contrast by four Japanese learners of French

La publication peut être trouvée au lien suivant:http://www.qmu.ac.uk/casl/conf/ultrafest%5F2013/docs/TKA_Kocjancic-Antolik_1_ultrafest.pdfInternational audienceJapanese learners of French commonly have difficulties producing perceptually recognisable French /y/ and /u/. The two sounds are articulatorily different from Japanese /u/, a high non-front vowel in the Tokyo variety with the tongue less retracted and lips less rounded than in French /u/ (Bothorel et al., 1986; Uemura & Takada, 1990). The French /u/ produced by native speakers of Tokyo Japanese is typically perceived as /ø/ by native listeners of French (Kamiyama & Vaissière, 2009). French /u/ and /y/ are phonemically contrastive in Parisian French and are present in a number of minimal pairs. Being able to produce perceptually recognisable French /u/ is thus necessary for Japanese learners, even more so because the more anterior realisations may overlap with French /y/. The two sounds are typically learned by way of perception, but the progress can be slow because of the lack of perceptual differentiation between them. For this reason, it was hypothesised that learners benefit from visual feedback of tongue position by avoiding relying only on perceptual route but rather addressing articulation directly. In total, seven participants took part in the study. The first subject was a 42-year-old female French native, recorded for reference articulatory and acoustic data. The six others were adult female native speakers of Japanese and living in Paris at the time of the study. They all started learning French as adults, were intermediate level learners and, at the time of participation, they were all attending a 12-week French pronunciation course including training sessions in language lab. Four of the participants (experimental group) received three 45-minute training sessions in which ultrasound was used as a visual aid in achieving and controlling the tongue position of the target vowels. The training began with isolated vowels, progressed to non-words with different phonetic contexts (facilitating, neutral and difficult contexts), then on to real words and sentences. The exact protocol was adjusted to the abilities and preferences of each participant. Each of these four participants underwent ultrasound and audio recordings three times: one week before the first training session (pre-training), one week after the last training session (post-training) and two months after the post-training recording (follow-up). The remaining three participants did not receive any ultrasound training (control group) but were also recorded two times: at the beginning and at the end of the pronunciation course. The recorded corpus consisted of ten repetitions of (1) [y] and [u] in isolation, as well as [a], [i] and the Japanese [ɯ] (not recorded in pre-training), (2) alternation between [y] and [u], (3) disyllabic non-words CVCV where V is /y/ or /u/, and C is /p/, /t/ or /k/, (4) 28 real words and (5) four sentences (not recorded in pre-training). The French native speaker was recorded only once. Acoustic and articulatory analyses are under way. In this abstract, we focus on the articulatory data for two of the subjects in the experimental group, the two in the control group and for the native subject. The current analysis of isolated /y/ and /u/ of the two Japanese learners who received ultrasound training confirms the difficulties that Japanese learners of French have with the production of French /y/ and /u/ (Kamiyama and Vaissière 2009). It also shows some improvements both in acoustic and in articulatory (Figure 1) data in post-training: AK shows a clearer separation between the tongue contours for each of the two vowels in the post-training recording, and even a greater distinction in follow-up. CS showed a further posteriorisation of the tongue root for /u/ after the ultrasound trainings (Figure 1), while the tongue shape is similar between the two recordings for both control learners: their /u/ is similar to the Japanese [ɯ] after traditional pronunciation lessons (figure 2). The four Japanese learners who received lessons with ultrasound reported that these sessions were enjoyable and effective for both /y/ and /u/. They said that the image helped them to better control the position of their tongue. 3 of 4 speakers easily understood this image, which helped them a lot. All of them would take some lessons with ultrasound to better articulate other French sounds. This study is a first step. Further analysis of the available data will allow inspecting articulatory improvements in more varied contexts (words vs. nonwords, mono-vs. disyllabic words, isolated vowels vs. words vs. sentences) as well as in more quantitative details (tongue height and curvature, tongue curvature position, Ménard et al. 2012; Dorsum Excursion Index DEI, Zharkova 2013, among others parameters). The method will also be useful for the analysis of other kinds of productions such as the singing voice