Browsing by Person "Ellis, Lucy"

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An instrumental study of alveolar to velar assimilation in fast and careful speech.
(1999) Ellis, Lucy; Hardcastle, William J.
The assimilation of a word-final alveolar to a following velar has been traditionally described as a discrete phonological process. That is, the place of articulation features for the alveolar have been completely swapped for those of the velar. More recently electropalatographic (EPG) studies have shown empirically that this process is sometimes gradual, providing evidence of intermediate `residual' alveolar articulations. These conflicting perspectives raise the question: at what level in the generation and execution of an utterance does assimilation occur? A number of speakers' productions of /n#k/ were recorded using EPG. The major finding is that while some subjects produce gradient assimilations, others clearly demonstrate categorical assimilations. The lack of residual movement in the latter group was confirmed in a pilot study using EPG in combination with EMA (electromagnetic articulography), a technique which complements EPG contact-only data. On the basis of this, a speaker-...
Articulatory placement for /t/, /d/, /k/ and / / targets in school age children with speech disorders associated with cleft palate.
(Taylor & Francis, 2004) Gibbon, Fiona; Ellis, Lucy; Crampin, Lisa
This study used electropalatography (EPG) to identify place of articulation for lingual plosive targets /t/, /d/, /k/ and / / in the speech of 15 school age children with repaired cleft palate. Perceptual judgements indicated that all children had correct velar placement for /k/, / / targets, but /t/, /d/ targets were produced as errors involving palatalization or velar placement. An EPG classification scheme identified alveolar, palatal and velar placement. Articulations involving contact in alveolar and velar regions simultaneously were identified as alveolar velar double articulations (AVDAs). The classification revealed that AVDAs were relatively frequent, with 28% of alveolar and 12% of velar targets affected, and ten out of the 15 children produced one or more of these abnormal articulations. The majority of children had variable placements, with alveolar more variable than velar targets. The positive finding from the EPG data revealed that most children with perceptual errors for /t/, /d/ were able to make closure in the alveolar region during at least some of their attempts to articulate these targets. It is argued that appropriate analysis and interpretation of EPG data provide clinically relevant information about tongue placement in cleft palate speech.
Categorical and gradient properties of assimilation in alveolar to velar sequences: evidence from EPG and EMA data
(Elsevier Science Limited, 2002) Ellis, Lucy; Hardcastle, William J.
Place assimilation in English is now widely considered to be a gradual phonetic, not categorical process. This view is partly based on previous EPG evidence of partial alveolar assimilations which lack complete stop closure on the alveolar ridge but show a residual tongue blade/body gesture. This study reports EPG data from 10 speakers producing, at varying rates of speech, two experimental sequences, /n#k/ and /?#k/ (the latter a lexical velar-velar sequence with which apparent cases of complete assimilation can be compared). In fast speech, four distinct assimilatory strategies were identified. Two subjects never assimilated, four always assimilated in what appeared to be a complete fashion and the remaining four were the most interesting, showing considerable intra-speaker variability. Two of these four produced the expected continuum of assimilatory forms including partials. Unexpectedly, the other two produced either full alveolars or complete assimilations in the manner of a binary opposition. Follow-up EMA analysis yielded no evidence of the reduced coronal gestures found to be absent in the EPG-only data for two the speakers who, when they assimilated, did so in a complete fashion. Although no claims are made regarding higher-order representations, we interpret this as evidence of marked individual differences in assimilation strategy.
EPG/EMA studies on speech motor coordination.
(2001-06) Hardcastle, William J.; Ellis, Lucy; Wood, Sara; Gibbon, Fiona