Tongue movements and syllable onset complexity: Ultrasound study

In this study ultrasound was used to investigate tongue movements in syllables with different number and type of onset consonants. Ultrasound recordings provided the information of the distance the tongue travels over a target, and audio recordings of the time needed. The speed of the tongue's travel was calculated from the two measurements. Results of ten speakers have shown that both duration and distance travelled increase with an increased number of onset segments, but that distance travelled is additionally influenced by the type of the segment, as is speed. Duration also seemed to be the least speaker-dependant of the three parameters. Key words: tongue movement, ultrasound, syllable onset.caslArticulate Instruments Ltd. 2007. Articulate Assistant Advanced User Guide: Version 2.07. Edinburgh, UK: Articulate Instruments Ltd. Crystal, T. H. and House, A. S. 1990. Articulation rate and the duration of syllables and stress groups in connected speech. Journal of the Acoustical Society of America 88 , 101-112. Greenberg, S., Carvey, H., Hitchcock, L. and Chang, S. Y. 2003. Temporal properties of spontaneous speech - a syllable-centric perspective. Journal of Phonetics 31, 465-485. Mooshammer, C., Geumann, A., Hoole, P, Alfonso, P., van Lieshout, P. and Fuchs, S. 2003. Coordination of lingual and mandibular gestures for different manners of articulation. In Proceedings of the 15th ICPhS, 81-84, Barcelona, Spain. Stone, M. 2005. A guide to analysing tongue motion from ultrasound images. Clinical Linguistics & Phonetics 19, 455-501. 4pub1995pu