Pre-speech tongue movements recorded with ultrasound

Abstract

We analyse Ultrasound Tongue Imaging (UTI) data from five speakers, whose native languages (L1) are English (3 peakers), German (1 speaker), and Finnish (1 speaker). The data consist of single words spoken in the subjects' respective native tongues as responses to a picture naming task. The focus of this study is on automating the analysis of ultrasound recordings of tongue movements that take place after the subject is presented with a stimulus. We analyse these movements with a pixel difference method (McMillan and Corley 2010; Drake, Schaeffler, and Corley 2013a; Drake, Schaeffler, and Corley 2013b), which yields an estimate on the rate of change on a frame by frame basis. We describe typical time dependent pixel difference contours and report grand average contours for each of the speakers.