Abstract
A kinematic experiment investigated tongue movement for vowels in American English with the aim of developing spatial targets for use by subjects in real-time interactive learning/remediation environments. A 3D EMA system (AG501, Carstens Medezinelektronic, GmbH) was used to track the position of the tongue (tongue tip, TT, and tongue back, TB) and lips (upper lip, UL, and lower lip, LL) of adult subjects producing the vowels of American English (12 monophthongs and 3 diphthongs) in the consonant environment /bVb/. Here, we asked which of the tongue sensors yields the best spatial separation of the corner vowels /i/, /u/, /æ/ and /ɑ/, and whether vowels that are acoustically close in formant space (e.g., the pairs /i/-/I/ and /e/-/ɛ/) are distinguishable by tongue sensor position. Data were recorded for ten talkers. Points taken at the vowel midpoint of each production were plotted to determine the spatial separation (Euclidean distance) between each vowel region (centroid). Preliminary results suggest TB sensors yield the most discriminable patterns for corner vowels. Tense/lax pairs show smaller differences, as predicted by acoustic theory. For most vowel contrasts examined, patterns of spatial separation appeared sufficient for real-time feedback applications.
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