Repository logo
 

CASL

Permanent URI for this collectionhttps://eresearch.qmu.ac.uk/handle/20.500.12289/22

Browse

Search Results

Now showing 1 - 2 of 2
  • Thumbnail Image
    Item
    Say again? Individual articulatory strategies for producing a clearly-spoken minimal pair wordlist
    (International Phonetic Association, 2019-08-10) Scobbie, James M.; Ma, Joan K-Y
    We describe articulatory differences (lingual and labial) between two versions (neutral and clear) of a CVC wordlist of 12 targets (V = /ieaɔoʉ/; C_C = /p_p/ or /m_m/). A companion paper describes the background; the participants, materials and tasks; the impressionistic and acoustic results. Labial measures reflect vowel opening (and edge-spreading) and consonant compression using fleshpoint markers captured by head-mounted video. Consonant closure and total word duration are based on visual judgement of complete closure. Ultrasound data provides the absolute area between neutral and clear mid-sagittal tongue-surface splines at the maximum of each vowel target, and a qualitative description of tongue shape and location. Strong and systematic interspeaker variation was evident in how articulation, acoustics and functional clarity were enhanced. Some large phonologically motivated segmental hyperspeech enhancements were observed, but they were not related straightforwardly to the phonological oppositions in the material nor consistently used by all speakers. Differences in utterance initiation are also discussed.
  • Thumbnail Image
    Item
    Say again? Individual acoustic strategies for producing a clearly-spoken minimal pair wordlist
    (International Phonetic Association, 2019-08-10) Scobbie, James M.; Ma, Joan K-Y
    People make their speech clearer in difficult conversational contexts using global mechanisms (e.g. “Lombard Speech”) and by targeted enhancements of linguistic constituents (“hyperspeech”). We describe production changes observed in four speakers of Scottish English who produced three repetitions of twelve CVC words: V was one of six monophthongs and C_C was either /p_p/ or /m_m/. Thus each word differed (near-) minimally from six others. In a “neutral” condition each participant read aloud from a randomised wordlist. A “clear” condition was an interactive task in which an interlocutor had to repeat back every word correctly, despite their hearing being impaired by headphone-delivered noise. If the speaker was mis-perceived by the interlocutor, the speaker tried again, until the word was correctly repeated. We describe the surprisingly speaker-specific acoustic hyperspeech effects (in vowel F1, vowel space area, and acoustic segment durations) in the clear speech. A companion paper describes the associated articulatory changes.