Transcript The articulatory settings of bilingual Canadian English- French speakers

The articulatory settings of
bilingual Canadian EnglishFrench speakers
Ian Wilson, Bryan Gick, Fiona Campbell,
& Eric Vatikiotis-Bateson
University of British Columbia
Ultrafest III - Apr.14, 2005
Tucson, AZ
Use of ultrasound for speech research
• Becoming much more common but still
has unresolved methodological issues
• Choice of methodology depends on:
– Experiment setting (lab vs. field)
– Type of subjects (adult, child, impaired, …)
– Type of study (biofeedback, etc.)
– [Bryan Gick will expand on this tomorrow]
The present study
• Normal adults
• Speakers of English & QuébécoisFrench
• Data collected in a laboratory
Methodological issues
• What to measure?
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Track given point on tongue? (EMA; x-ray microbeam)
Shape of tongue surface in 2D, 3D
Cross-sectional area under curve of tongue
Relative timing of tongue gestures
Distance from tongue surface to fixed point
Measuring tongue surface to fixed point
• What fixed point?
– Transducer surface / centre
– Opposing surface (i.e. palate, pharyngeal wall)
Tongue to fixed point: more issues
• Need to make opposing surface visible:
– Have subject swallow
– CT scan
• Measurement location based on:
– Location of opposing surface point
– Location of tongue gesture
• Controlling and/or correcting for head
movement relative to probe:
1. Optotrak/video
2. Helmet
3. Restraint
• Data extraction:
– By hand
– Software for edge detection / curve fitting
Back to the present study
• Articulatory Setting (AS)
– When speaking a foreign language, one’s
articulators seem to have a whole different
underlying posture
Different languages sound different
• Why??
– Different phonemes + …
– Different phonologies + …
– Different articulatory settings
• “gross oral posture and mechanics” of a
language - Honikman (1964)
Implications of language-specific AS (1)
• Second language acquisition
– Quantitative evidence to support newer L2
teaching methodologies (Mompeán-González,
2003)
• Speech motor control
– If AS is weighted average of postures for all
phonemes in a language (Laver, 2000), then
supports view of AS being functionally determined,
reducing travel cost of articulators (Rosenbaum et
al., 1995)
Implications of language-specific AS (2)
• Models of speech production
– de Bot’s (1992) model of bilingual speech
production contains articulator (Levelt, 1989) that
uses set of non-language specific speech motor
plans
• Predicts bilinguals have 1 AS shared between languages
& could be based on type frequency
• Hesitation pauses & schwa
– AS may be reflected in these (e.g. AS for French
has protruded lips & schwa is rounded)
Implications of language-specific AS (3)
• Development of languages
– Esling (2000): possible that “instances of
language change are accomplished by
slightly altering AS, which in turn produces
minute, sub-phonemic changes in the
phonetic quality of certain susceptible
segments.”
How to measure AS
• Gick, Wilson, Koch & Cook (2004 Phonetica)
– Link AS to inter-speech posture (Barry,
1992; Gick, 2002) reducing segmental
interference
Gick et al. measurements taken
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1 = pharynx width*
2 = VPP width
3 = TB to palate*
4 = TT to palate*
5 = upper central
incisors to jaw
• 6 = upper lip protrusion*
• 7 = lower lip protrusion*
* Significantly different across languages
AS in bilinguals
• Why bilinguals?
– Within a speaker, can compare across languages
without worrying about physiological differences
– Bilinguals may economize in their tongue gestures
(Wilson, 2003) and VOT (Watson, 1990, 1991)
• Is AS like a speech target in the sense that economy can
play a part?
– If AS is simply functional, this predicts speaking
mode (bilingual vs. monolingual) will affect AS
(Grosjean, 1998)
Subjects
• 10 monolingual Canadian-English
speakers
• 10 monolingual Quebecois-French
speakers
• 10 bilingual English-French speakers
Stimuli
• Monolingual subject trials:
– At least 6 blocks of 30 utterances (=180 possible rest
positions per subject)
• Bilingual subject trials:
– 2 English blocks, 2 French blocks, 2 mixed language
blocks
– Before mixed language blocks, subject is informed that
language of the next sentence is randomly selected
• Phonetic context of first and last syllables
controlled for as much as possible across
languages
Method: Experimental set-up
Method: Optotrak marker set-up
Ultrasound data for MLD (bilingual)
QuickTime™ and a
DV - NTSC decompressor
are needed to see this picture.
• Bilingual trial; B-mode & M-mode ultrasound
Method: Correction for head movement
• Palate trace done after swallow; can then measure
shortest distance from alveolar ridge to tongue
• Optotrak tracks
head as rigid
body; probe is
fixed & position
is known by
Optotrak
• Rotate/translate
palate trace
about probe
(MATLAB…)
Results for MLD - tongue tip
• Tongue tip to alveolar ridge
distance
– English:
• mean = 21.13 pix
• (N=35; std dev=2.91)
– French:
• mean = 17.44 pix
• (N=42; std dev=3.81)
– Bilingual mode:
E
F
Bil
Group means &
95% confidence intervals)
• mean = 23.06 pix
• (N=43; std dev=3.09)
Results for MLD - vertical lip aperture
• Vertical lip aperture
– English:
• mean = 23.13 mm
• (N=20; std dev=1.88)
– French:
• mean = 23.47 mm
• (N=20; std dev=1.12)
– Bilingual:
• mean = 23.82 mm
• (N=21; std dev=1.30)
• No significant differences
Results for MLD - horizontal lip aperture
• Horizontal lip aperture
– English:
• mean = 50.52 mm
• (N=20; std dev=0.76)
– French:
• mean = 51.60 mm
• (N=20; std dev=1.68)
– Bilingual:
• mean = 49.79 mm
• (N=21; std dev=0.40)
E
F
Bil
Group means &
95% confidence intervals)
Significance of findings so far
• Support for existence of language-specific AS;
not contextually determined
• AS in bilingual mode does not fall between 2
monolingual mode settings
– implies AS is not determined simply by motor control
constraints such as articulator “travel cost”
• N.B.: speech is a low-energy system
– when language target unknown, subject’s inter-speech
posture is closer to absolute rest position (i.e. a
position out of speech mode)
• Seemingly uneconomic
Next Steps
• What is the relationship of type & token frequency
to AS?
• Is AS different for natural speech vs. read speech?
Nonsense words vs. real words? (i.e. is it task
dependent)
• What is the relationship between L2 pronunciation
proficiency and AS?
• What is perceptually salient in AS (i.e. if learned,
how is it learned?) Can it all be read in the face?!
Thank you!
• Thanks to:
Jason Chang
Shaffiq Rahemtullah
Doug Pulleyblank
and all our cooperative subjects.
References
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segment, prosody (pp. 65-67) Cambridge: Cambridge University Press.
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Esling (2000) Crosslinguistic aspects of voice quality. In R. D. Kent & M. J. Ball, (Eds.), Voice quality measurement (pp. 25-35). San
Diego: Singular.
Gick et al. (2004) Language-specific articulatory settings: Evidence from inter-utterance rest position. Phonetica 61: 220-233.
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