Comparative electromagnetic articulographic study of English rhythm as produced by native and non-native speakers

Abstract

Previous work suggests that concurrent changes in jaw displacement and formant frequencies may manifest rhythm of spoken American English utterances [e.g., Erickson, in Proceedings of the Speech Prosody 2010, Chicago (May 2010), p. 1]. This paper compares jaw displacement and corresponding formant frequencies of monosyllabic American English words produced on low vowels in four word phrases with varying positions of emphasis as spoken by three native speakers and three Japanese speakers of English. Preliminary findings suggest an alternating pattern of strong-weak jaw displacement along with corresponding formant changes for the native speakers. This pattern was not consistently seen for the non-native speakers and seemed to vary as a function of their skill-level in spoken English.