Browsing by Person "Hoole, Philip"

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Investigating the asymmetry of English sibilant assimilation: Acoustic and EPG data
(Walter de Gruyter, 2011-05-01) Pouplier, Marianne; Hoole, Philip; Scobbie, James M.
We present tongue-palate contact (EPG) and acoustic data on English sibilant assimilation, with a particular focus on the asymmetry arising from the order of the sibilants. It is generally known that /s# / sequences may display varying degrees of regressive assimilation in fluent speech, yet for / #s/ it is widely assumed that no assimilation takes place, although the empirical content of this assumption has rarely been investigated nor a clear theoretical explanation proposed. We systematically compare the two sibilant orders in word-boundary clusters. Our data show that /s# / sequences assimilate frequently and this assimilation is strictly regressive. The assimilated sequence may be indistinguishable from a homorganic control sequence by our measures, or it can be characterized by measurement values intermediate to those typical for / / or /s/. / #s/ sequences may also show regressive assimilation, albeit less frequently and to a lesser degree. Assimilated / #s/ sequences are always distinguishable from /s#s/ sequences. In a few cases, we identify progressive assimilation for / #s/. We discuss how to account for the differences in degree of assimilation, and we propose that the order asymmetry may arise from the different articulatory control structures employed for the two sibilants in conjunction with phonotactic probability effects.
Recording speech articulation in dialogue: Evaluating a synchronized double Electromagnetic Articulography setup
(Elsevier, 2013-08-28) Geng, Christian C.; Turk, Alice; Scobbie, James M.; Macmartin, Cedric; Hoole, Philip; Richmond, Korin; Wrench, Alan A.; Pouplier, Marianne; Bard, Ellen Gurman; Campbell, Ziggy; Dickie, Catherine; Dubourg, Eddie; Hardcastle, William J.; Kainada, Evia; King, Simon; Lickley, Robin; Nakai, Satsuki; Renals, Steve; White, Kevin; Wiegand, Ronny; EPSRC
We demonstrate the workability of an experimental facility that is geared towards the acquisition of articulatory data from a variety of speech styles common in language use, by means of two synchronized electromagnetic articulography (EMA) devices. This approach synthesizes the advantages of real dialogue settings for speech research with a detailed description of the physiological reality of speech production. We describe the facility's method for acquiring synchronized audio streams of two speakers and the system that enables communication among control room technicians, experimenters and participants. Further, we demonstrate the feasibility of the approach by evaluating problems inherent to this specific setup: The first problem is the accuracy of temporal synchronization of the two EMA machines, the second is the severity of electromagnetic interference between the two machines. Our results suggest that the synchronization method used yields an accuracy of approximately 1 ms. Electromagnetic interference was derived from the complex-valued signal amplitudes. This dependent variable was analyzed as a function of the recording status - i.e. on/off - of the interfering machine's transmitters. The intermachine distance was varied between 1 m and 8.5 m. Results suggest that a distance of approximately 6.5 m is appropriate to achieve data quality comparable to that of single speaker recordings.