@article {461, title = {Left-right asymmetry in tongue-palate contact during speech}, year = {2019}, publisher = {Nederlandse Vereniging voor Fonetische Wetenschappen}, address = {Amsterdam, The Netherlands}, abstract = {Electropalatography (EPG) is an instrumental technique for depicting tongue-palate contact during speech. Published palatograms frequently show left-right asymmetry in the amount of tongue-palate contact. This could arise due to several factors, including the speaker{\textquoteright}s anatomy, handedness, and language lateralisation, as well as asymmetries in the electropalate manufacture. This study investigated the direction of asymmetry in two groups of speakers categorised according to handedness. Ten native speakers of English (5 left-handed, 5 right-handed) carried out various speech tasks, including sentence-reading and delivering a monologue. The sentence stimuli consisted of a phonetically balanced set of 460 semantically meaningful sentences (example: An official deadline cannot be postponed) taken from an online speech corpus (Wrench, 2019). The speech data were recorded while the speakers wore a custom-made electropalate with 62 electrodes. Left-right asymmetry in the EPG data was measured by calculating an index of asymmetry for each utterance. The index provided information about both the direction and size of the asymmetry. The main finding was that the direction of asymmetry was such that there was more extensive tongue-palate contact on the left-hand side in four out of five speakers in both handedness groups. This observation is not consistent with the hypothesis that handedness may be a causative factor. The finding of greater contact on the left-hand side is entirely consistent with research on lip opening during speech: Graves et al. (1982) carried out a series of observational experiments which indicated that 150 out of 196 participants (76\%) showed more lip contact on the left-hand side and greater lip separation on the right. It seems likely that the asymmetries in both of these articulatory mechanisms are caused by the same underlying principle {\textendash} for example, language lateralisation, which holds that in most speakers, the left hemisphere of the brain is language-dominant (Knecht et al. 2000). The presentation will discuss several possible mechanisms that could cause greater tongue-palate contact on the left-hand side. References Graves, R., Goodglass, H. \& Landis, T. (1982). Mouth asymmetry during spontaneous speech. Neuropsychologia 20, 371-381. Knecht, S., Dr{\"a}ger, B., Deppe, M. et al. (2000). Handedness and hemispheric language dominance in healthy humans. Brain 123, 2512-2518. Wrench, A. (2019). Mocha-Timit Multichannel Articulatory Database: English. http://www.cstr.ed.ac.uk/research/projects/artic/mocha.html. }, author = {Naomi Miller and Jo Verhoeven and Luc Daems and Carlos Reyes-Aldasoro} } @article {469, title = {Poster: Trill Type and Articulatory Setting: an EPG study}, year = {2019}, publisher = {Nederlandse Vereniging voor Fonetische Wetenschappen}, address = {Amsterdam, The Netherlands}, abstract = {A long-standing practice in Flemish drama schools has been to promote a tongue-tip trill realisation of the phoneme /r/. Thus, actors with a natural uvular trill have been required to learn to pronounce an alveolar trill. The rationale behind this, reportedly, is the assumption that the use of an alveolar trill triggers a shift in the articulatory setting towards a more anterior position, hence improving the actor{\textquoteright}s intelligibility. It is not clear what scientific principle this expectation is based on, but it is commonly mentioned in pronunciation manuals; see, for example, Eldar (1906:159), Oostveen (1936:35), van Amelsvoort \& Franssen (1960:65), Linthorst et al. (1968:64), Timmermans (2008:179), and Lacroix (2009:178). Electropalatography data were collected from a professional speaker of Belgian Dutch who uses a naturally-acquired uvular-r in everyday speech and a learnt tongue-tip trill in her professional work. Sentences in which either the first or last word began with /r/ were firstly read with an alveolar-r, and then all sentences were re-read with a uvular-r. For each realisation, the palatograms associated with /r/ and its five neighbouring phonemes were excluded, to eliminate the effects of coarticulation. A front-back centre-of-gravity (CoG) measure was calculated from the remaining palatograms. When /r/ occurred in sentence-final position, there was a significant (p<0.01, Mann-Whitney U-test) effect of trill type (median CoG 0.422 and 0.413 for alveolar and uvular, respectively). This suggests that the articulatory setting is slightly more anterior in utterances with alveolar trills. It is unlikely, however, that this small difference has a significant effect on speaker intelligibility. There was no difference in CoG when /r/ occurred in sentence-initial position. References F. van Amelsvoort \& A. Franssen (1960). Stem en spraak. s.l., Parcival, 3th pr. A.M. Eldar (1906). Spreken en zingen. Tiel, D. Mijs, 10th ed. C. Lacroix (2009). Goed gestemd. Tielt, Lannoo. P. Linthorst, G. Leerkamp \& M. Galle (1968). Het spreekonderwijs op de kweekschool. Groningen/Leuven, Wolters-Noordhoff/J.B. Wolters, 10th pr. J. Oostveen (1936). Theorie en praktijk van het spreken. The Hague, G. Naeff. B. Timmermans (2008). Klink klaar. Uitspraak- en intonatiegids voor het Nederlands. Leuven, Davidsfonds, rev. ed. }, author = {Jo Verhoeven and Naomi Miller and Luc Daems and Hanne Kloots and Carlos Reyes-Aldasoro} } @article {437, title = {Studying asymmetries in tongue-palate contact in speech}, year = {2018}, publisher = {Nederlandse Vereniging voor Fonetische Wetenschappen}, address = {Amsterdam, The Netherlands}, abstract = {In speech-production studies, it is often implicitly assumed that articulation is symmetrical in the transverse plane of the vocal tract, i.e., that the amount of tongue contact with the palate is equal on the left- and right-hand sides. However, published palatograms visualising tongue-palate contact patterns generally show left-right asymmetry, although this finding is rarely mentioned. Characterisation of articulation asymmetry in native speakers would improve understanding of the process of speech production and its relationship with both neural organisation and the anatomy of the organs of speech. The overall goal of this research is to conduct an empirical electropalatography study with 20 subjects in which the direction and amount of asymmetry in tongue-palate contact are studied as a function of (a) the type of speech sound, (b) anatomical asymmetries in speakers{\textquoteright} palates, and (c) speaker handedness. The current study describes preliminary work in which an automated method for calculating a variety of asymmetry metrics from a time-series of palatograms was developed. The algorithm was applied to publicly available palatograms (Mocha-Timit) from two speakers performing a sentence production task. Asymmetry metrics were examined as a function of the place and manner of articulation. Most speech sound realisations were found to be asymmetrical with some clear differences between the speakers. }, author = {Naomi Miller and Carlos Reyes-Aldasoro and Luc Daems and Jo Verhoeven} } @article {21, title = {Relationship between segmental speech errors and intelligibility in speakers with acquired dysarthria}, year = {2017}, publisher = {Nederlandse Vereniging voor Fonetische Wetenschappen}, address = {Amsterdam, The Netherlands}, abstract = {

The standard approach to dysarthria assessment involves rating 38 perceptual dimensions of speech on a 7- point severity scale (Darley, 1969). The drawbacks of this method are that it (a) reduces the wide range of pronunciation errors to one perceptual dimension ({\textquotedblleft}articulatory imprecision{\textquotedblright}) and (b) presupposes that the most {\textquotedblleft}severe{\textquotedblright} speech errors are the greatest barrier to intelligibility.

This study aimed to identify prototypical pronunciation errors in Belgian Dutch speakers with dysarthria and to examine the relationship between segmental speech errors and intelligibility in spontaneous speech. Participants included speakers with acquired dysarthria due to stroke or cerebellar disease (n = 11) and age- matched controls (n = 10). A novel intelligibility test was devised consisting of 120 monosyllabic targets and perceptual errors were identified via an orthographic transcription task. Spontaneous speech was analysed using a listening paradigm that generates quantitative measures of intelligibility (Lagerberg et al., 2014). Common consonant errors included devoicing, fronting and cluster formation. The most common vowel distortions were increased height (kent {\textrightarrow} kind) and reduced duration (staart {\textrightarrow} start). Segmental speech errors are discussed with respect to articulatory complexity and functional load. There was only a weak correlation between single-word intelligibility and intelligibility in spontaneous speech.

References:

}, author = {Naomi Miller and Peter Mariën and Jo Verhoeven} }