Articulatory kinematic and formant frequency changes across vocalic nuclei: Some preliminary analyses

Abstract

There are few data relating changes in articulatory position to changes in vocalic formant frequencies. This kind of information is useful for speech-production theory in general and specifically in understanding the relationship in neurogenic speech disorders between movement effects and resulting speech-intelligibility deficits. The purpose of this study was therefore to assemble a fairly large kinematic/acoustic database on normal speakers, for a few words that have proven useful in our studies of the intelligibility deficit in dysarthria. Data were part of the x-ray microbeam database, and for the present study included the words ‘‘hail,’’ ‘‘shoot,’’ and ‘‘coat.’’ The position histories of four tongue pellets and two lip pellets as well as the time histories of the first and second formant frequencies were studied for 45 young adult speakers. The F2 transition extent (change in F2 across a defined time interval) was significantly correlated with some combination of the pellet time histories for each word, and the magnitude of the correlation showed clear gender effects. Results will be discussed in terms of the linkage between planar kinematic data and acoustic data in predicting speech-intelligibility deficits. [Work supported by NIH DC03723 and DC000820.]