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Permanent URI for this collectionhttps://eresearch.qmu.ac.uk/handle/20.500.12289/22
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Item Pairwise lingual differences in tongue shape-location(University of Aizu, 2024-06-28) Scobbie, James M.Vowel and consonant phoneme inventories have been structured into multidimensional systems using a relatively consistent range of factors since the 19th century. For consonants these include primary place of articulation, degree of constriction, and voicing. For vowels these include the dimensions close-open, front-back, and rounded vs. unrounded. Secondary dimensions encode airstream, source characteristics or other aspects. Detailed impressionistic and instrumental research can be used to group phonetically-similar phonemes into natural classes (e.g. “alveolars” or “close-front vowels”). Phonological allophony, morphophonemic alternation and patterns of phonetic variation within and across speakers support more phonetically-heterogenous (aka “abstract”) classes. But if two contrasting phonemes are phonetically almost identical for some phonetic property, such as lingual shape and place, it is straightforward to argue that they share whichever phonological features are used in the analysis of that property. For example, if two vowels contrast, but their midsagittal tongue profiles are identical (or close enough), then we would be highly likely to analyse them with the same lingual features. For a specific example, consider two vowels [i] and [y]. They would probably both be phonologized as /i/ and /y/, i.e. both /+HIGH/ and /+FRONT/, and contrast in /ROUND/.Item Language-specific coarticulatory patterns: a comparative study of Arabic and Spanish(University of Aizu, 2024-06-28) Dahlgren, Sonja; Ramsammy, Michael; Scobbie, James M.Background: We investigate a hypothesis for languages to be phonologically categorised based on direction of coarticulation: i.e. whether coarticulation mainly occurs from consonant to vowel (C-to-V) or from vowel to consonant (V-to-C), and whether this is connected to language-specific phonological contrasts. We report preliminary findings from an Ultrasound Tongue Imaging (UTI) study on Arabic and Spanish focusing on the velar stop /k/. Previous studies highlight language-specific preferences for the direction of coarticulation [3]: e.g. consonant to vowel (Caucasian [6]) versus vowel to consonant (English [1]; Greek [5]). Furthermore, in an acoustic study of V1CV2 utterances [4], it was noticed that English and Swedish allow the articulators to start moving toward the configuration of V2 at the acoustic end of V1 before the consonant occlusion, while Russian did not. Our initial hypothesis was that coarticulatory preferences mainly result from the ratio between vowels and consonants in the phoneme inventory (cf. [2]): i.e. languages with a high number of consonantal contrasts should show different coarticulatory patterns from languages with fewer phonemic consonants. With this in mind, Arabic and Spanish form a good comparative pair: Modern Standard Arabic has 39 consonants and 3 vowel qualities that also admit a quantity contrast. Spanish has a smaller system, comprising 17–19 consonants (dialect dependently) and 5 vowel qualities.Item Improving ultrasound post estimation accuracy by training on co-registered EMA data(University of Aizu, 2024-06-28) Balch-Tomes, Jonathan; Wrench, Alan A.; Scobbie, James M.; Macmartin, C.; Turk, A.This study aims to assess how accurately DeepLabCut [1], when applied to ultrasound tongue images, can estimate Electromagnetic Articulography (EMA) sensor positions. EMA provides objective measures of anterior tongue, jaw, and lip kinematics. DeepLabCut pose estimation is a powerful method of extracting keypoint positions from midsagittal ultrasound images of the tongue. It has an advantage over EMA in that it can be applied to the whole of the tongue from tip to root as well as the jaw and the hyoid. After correction for probe translation standard error in the estimation of keypoint positions compared to the corresponding EMA sensor positions was 1.2-1.5mm along the tongue contour and 0.5-0.9mm perpendicular to the tongue contour.Item English (Scottish) speech development(Oxford University Press, 2024) Scobbie, James M.; Cleland, Joanne; Lawson, Eleanor; Schaeffler, Sonja; McLeod, SharynneScottish English is primarily spoken in Scotland, U.K. It is a national quasi-standard variety of English with a range of social and geographical variants. It can be characterized as a highly distinctive accent (or accent group) of English, mainly due to its relationship to Scots. Its strongly distinct character may be more phonetic, prosodic and lexical than strictly phonemic and phonological, so for practical reasons it can be assumed that its inventory and consonant phonotactics overlap sufficiently with other varieties for many “British English” clinical resources to be applicable. Scottish English is, however, rhotic in its prestige varieties, which makes it markedly different from non-rhotic Southern Standard British English and other non-rhotic varieties. There are few specific studies of children’s acquisition of Scottish English, though Scottish children are often incorporated in larger studies in the U.K. Research on Scottish English has focused on social variation, speech production, and remediation techniques augmented with real time visual biofeedback, involving children with speech sound disorders and cleft palate. Commonly-used speech assessments and interventions have not been developed specifically for this variety of English.Item Apparent time change in the articulation of onset rhotics in Southern British English(2023-08) Strycharczuk, Patrycja; Lloyd, Susan; Scobbie, James M.The /r/ phoneme in Anglo English is known to correspond to a number of relatively distinct articulatory variants. However, little is known about the social structure of this variation. In this study,we investigate the effect of two social factors, age and gender, on the production of /r/, in a sample of 36 speakers from the South of England. We analysed ultrasound images of prevocalic /r/ tokens. We measured the distances between the short tendon and 11 points on the tongue surface. We compared these distances across speakers in representative /r/ frames. We find an apparent time difference whereby the distance between the tongue tip and the short tendon reduced in apparent time, potentially signalling an ongoing sound change from a tipup to tipdown /r/.Item Similar and different tongue surface contours: intra-speaker controls in ultrasound analysis(2023-08) Scobbie, James M.Ultrasound studies of speech production analyse differences in dependent variables reflecting the tongue surface’s location and shape. Inferential statistics distinguish theoretically-relevant from random effects, somewhat independently of the descriptive size of significant effects. Experimental designs induce measurable dependent changes by manipulating independent variables such as prosody, phonemic target, etc. This paper presents descriptive statistics quantifying holistically all 15 pairwise differences between six monophthongal long vowel phonemes of one variety of English, comparing these to experimental noise differences attributable to the use of two identical blocks of data collection in sequence. Eight speakers were recorded, using two different ultrasound systems, and analysed in AAA using both edge-tracking and DeepLabCut pose estimation. The smallest phonemic contrast (~2mm) was greater than the experimental noise (~1mm), and was well evidenced by AAA’s t-test of radial difference.Item Matched-accent processing: Bulgarian-English bilinguals do not have a processing advantage with Bulgarian-accented English over native English speech(Open Library of Humanities, 2022-06-10) Dokovova, Marie; Scobbie, James M.; Lickley, RobinThe Interlanguage Intelligibility Benefit hypothesis (ISIB) for Talkers suggests that there is a potential benefit when listening to one’s second language when it is produced in the accent of one’s first language (matched-accent processing). This study explores ISIB, considering listener proficiency. According to second language learning theories, the listener’s second language proficiency determines the extent to which they rely on their first language phonetics, hence the magnitude of ISIB may be affected by listener proficiency. The accuracy and reaction times of Bulgarian-English bilinguals living in the UK were recorded in a lexical decision task. The English stimuli were produced by native English speakers and Bulgarian-English bilinguals. Listeners responded more slowly and less accurately to the matched-accent stimuli than the native English stimuli. In addition, they adapted their reaction times faster to new speakers with a native English accent compared to a Bulgarian accent. However, the listeners with the lowest English proficiency had no advantage in reaction times and accuracy for either accent. The results offer mixed support for ISIB for Talkers and are consistent with second language learning theories, according to which listeners rely less on their native language phonology when their proficiency in the second language has increased.Item Practical options for articulatory feedback in the speech clinic(Wiley-Blackwell, 2023-07) Cleland, Joanne; Scobbie, James M.; Bowen, CarolineItem Coarticulation across morpheme boundaries: An ultrasound study of past-tense inflection in Scottish English(Elsevier, 2021-09-15) Mousikou, Petroula; Strycharczuk, Patrycja; Turk, Alice; Scobbie, James M.It has been hypothesized that morphologically-complex words are mentally stored in a decomposed form, often requiring online composition during processing. Morphologically-simple words can only be stored as a whole. The way a word is stored and retrieved is thought to influence its realization during speech production, so that when retrieval requires less time, the articulatory plan is executed faster. Faster articulatory execution could result in more coarticulation. Accordingly, we hypothesized that morphologically-simple words might be produced with more coarticulation than apparently homophonous morphologically-complex words, because the retrieval of monomorphemic forms is direct, in contrast to morphologically-complex ones, which might need to be composed online into full word forms. Using Ultrasound Tongue Imaging, we tested this hypothesis with nine speakers of Scottish English. Over two days of training, participants learned phonemically identical monomorphemic and morphologically-complex nonce words, while on the third consecutive testing day, they produced them in two prosodic contexts. Two types of articulatory analyses revealed no systematic differences in coarticulation between monomorphemic and morphologically-complex items, yet a few speakers did idiosyncratically produce some morphological effects on articulation. Our work contributes to our understanding of how morphologically complex words are stored and processed during speech production.Item Quantifying changes in ultrasound tongue-shape pre- and post-intervention in speakers with submucous cleft palate: An illustrative case study(Taylor & Francis, 2021-09-08) Roxburgh, Zoe; Cleland, Joanne; Scobbie, James M.; Wood, SaraUltrasound Tongue Imaging is increasingly used during assessment and treatment of speech sound disorders. Recent literature has shown that ultrasound is also useful for the quantitative analysis of a wide range of speech errors. So far, the compensatory articulations of speakers with cleft palate have only been analysed qualitatively. This study provides a pilot quantitative ultrasound analysis, drawing on longitudinal intervention data from a child with submucous cleft palate. Two key ultrasound metrics were used: 1. articulatory t-tests were used to compare tongue-shapes for perceptually collapsed phonemes on a radial measurement grid and 2. the Mean Radial Difference was reported to quantify the extent to which the two tongue shapes differ, overall. This articulatory analysis supplemented impressionistic phonetic transcriptions and identified covert contrasts. Articulatory errors identified in this study using ultrasound were in line with errors identified in the speech of children with cleft palate in previous literature. While compensatory error patterns commonly found in speakers with cleft palate have been argued to facilitate functional phonological development, the nature of our findings suggest that the compensatory articulations uncovered are articulatory in nature.