Articulatory Maneuvers Research Articles

Articulatory-based Phonemic Paraphasia in Conduction Aphasia: A Dysfunction in Phoneme-to-Articulation Conversion Uncovered Through Crossed Aphasia.

Phonemic paraphasia, a common characteristic of conduction aphasia, has traditionally been attributed to phonological representation dysfunction. An alternative hypothesis posits that phonemic paraphasia arises from difficulty converting phonemes into their corresponding articulatory maneuvers. However, detailed case studies supporting this theory have been lacking. In this report, we present the case of a 61-year-old right-handed man with right temporo-parietal infarction who exhibited crossed aphasia characterized by typical conduction aphasia symptoms (eg, relatively fluent speech with intact comprehension, frequent phonemic paraphasia, and pronounced difficulties in oral repetition) in the absence of distorted articulation, syllable segmentation, and prosody impairment. Despite the frequent occurrence of phonemic paraphasia and articulatory challenges, our patient's phonological representations remained relatively intact. His phonemic paraphasia was often self-corrected to produce correct responses, a feature known as conduit d'approche. During the oral repetition of individual mora (ie, the smallest unit of speech in Japanese), we observed that the patient consistently traced the corresponding Hiragana phonetic symbol accurately, despite his difficulties in articulation. We substantiated this phenomenon through objective assessment and posit that it resulted from an unusual separation of language functions in crossed aphasia-specifically, a disconnection between phonological representations in the right temporo-parietal cortex and speech articulation engrams in the left hemisphere. In this case of conduction aphasia, articulatory-based phonemic paraphasia may be viewed as an inability to convert phonemes into the appropriate articulatory maneuvers rather than as phonological representation dysfunction or apraxia of speech.

Correcting the record: Phonetic potential of primate vocal tracts and the legacy of Philip Lieberman (1934-2022).

The phonetic potential of nonhuman primate vocal tracts has been the subject of considerable contention in recent literature. Here, the work of Philip Lieberman (1934-2022) is considered at length, and two research papers-both purported challenges to Lieberman's theoretical work-and a review of Lieberman's scientific legacy are critically examined. I argue that various aspects of Lieberman's research have been consistently misinterpreted in the literature. A paper by Fitch et al.overestimates the would-be "speech-ready"capacities of a rhesus macaque, and the data presented nonetheless supports Lieberman's principal position-that nonhuman primates cannot articulate the full extent of human speech sounds. The suggestion that no vocal anatomical evolution was necessary for the evolution of human speech (as spoken by all normally developing humans) is not supported by phonetic or anatomical data. The second challenge, by Boë et al., attributes vowel-like qualities of baboon calls to articulatory capacities based on audio data; I argue that such "protovocalic"properties likely result from disparate articulatory maneuvers compared to human speakers. A review of Lieberman's scientific legacy by Boë et al.ascribes a view of speech evolution (which the authors term "laryngeal descent theory") to Lieberman, which contradicts his writings. The present article documents a pattern of incorrect interpretations of Lieberman's theoretical work in recent literature. Finally, the apparent trend of vowel-like formant dispersions in great ape vocalization literature is discussed with regard to Lieberman's theoretical work. The review concludes that the "Lieberman account"of primate vocal tract phonetic capacities remains supported by research: the ready articulation of fully human speech reflects species-unique anatomy.

What do voices contribute to acoustic context effects in speech perception?

All perception takes place in context, and speech perception is no exception. Surrounding sounds form a context that guides speech perception. This is particularly true when earlier sounds inform the perception and/or recognition of later sounds. Several lines of research have advanced models where listeners use preceding context to account for characteristics of the talker’s voice, such as vocal tract properties, articulatory maneuvers, or the speaker’s identity. Conversely, research with nonspeech sounds and/or nonhuman animals has advanced alternative models where perception is responding more to signal acoustics than to vocal characteristics. In this talk, I will review recent evidence from our research on acoustic context effects and talker normalization when hearing speech and nonspeech (music) sounds. Parallel patterns of performance across speech and music domains are conducive to, but not definitive evidence of, acoustic context being utilized according to general signal acoustics, with speech- and voice-specific contributions coming later in the processing stream.

Tongue Postures and Tongue Centers: A Study of Acoustic-Articulatory Correspondences Across Different Head Angles.

Recent research on body and head positions has shown that postural changes may induce varying degrees of changes on acoustic speech signals and articulatory gestures. While the preservation of formant profiles across different postures is suitably accounted for by the two-tube model and perturbation theory, it remains unclear whether it is resulted from the accommodation of tongue postures. Specifically, whether the tongue accommodates the changes in head angle to maintain the target acoustics is yet to be determined. The present study examines vowel acoustics and their correspondence with the articulatory maneuvers of the tongue, including both tongue postures and movements of the tongue center, across different head angles. The results show that vowel acoustics, including pitch and formants, are largely unaffected by upward or downward tilting of the head. These preserved acoustics may be attributed to the lingual gestures that compensate for the effects of gravity. Our results also reveal that the tongue postures in response to head movements appear to be vowel-dependent, and the tongue center may serve as an underlying drive that covariates with the head angle changes. These results imply a close relationship between vowel acoustics and tongue postures as well as a target-oriented strategy for different head angles.

Immediate effects of cervical stimulation and diaphragmatic release on vocal production

Abstract Introduction: The voice is heavily influenced by breathing and abdominal muscles. Objective: To verify the immediate effects of cervical stimulation and diaphragmatic release on the respiratory and phonatory function of adult women with no vocal complaints. Method: Relaxation maneuvers and eccentric work of the diaphragm were performed together with articulatory maneuver of the third cervical vertebra. Twenty-four women without vocal complaints, aged between 18 and 35 years were part of the intervention. All volunteers were submitted to an evaluation of respiratory muscle strength, maximum phonation time of the vowel /a/, sound pressure level and acoustic vocal analysis, before and after physiotherapeutic intervention. Statistical analysis consisted of the Student's t-test for independent samples and Spearman's correlation. Significance level was set at 5%. Results: There was a significant increase in the maximum phonation time of the vowel /a/ and in the modal sound pressure level. Regarding the acoustic analysis, there was a reduction in the standard deviation values of the fundamental frequency; in the smoothed pitch disturbance quotient; and in the fundamental frequency and amplitude variations. Conclusion: Cervical stimulation and diaphragmatic release improved vocal quality regarding duration of emission, sound pressure, and stability and noise of the glottic signal.

Sound symbolism, speech expressivity and crossmodality

The direct links existing between sound and meaning which characterize sound symbolism can be thought of as mainly related to two kinds of phenomena: sound iconicity and sound metaphors. The first refers to the mirror relations established between sound and meaning effects (Nobile, 2011) and the latter as coined by Fonagy (1983) refers to the relationships based on analogies between meaning and speech sound production characteristics. Four relevant codes to the study of sound symbolism phenomena have been mentioned in the phonetic literature: the frequency code (Ohala, 1994), the respiratory code, the effort code (Gussenhoven, 2002) and the sirenic code (Gussenhoven, 2016). In the present work sound symbolism is taken to be the basis of speech expressivity because the meaning effects attributed to the spoken mode by the listeners are thought to be based on the acoustic features of sounds deriving from the various articulatory maneuvers yielding breath, voice, noise, resonance and silence. Based on the impression caused by the acoustic features, listeners attribute physiological, physical, psychological and social characteristics to speakers. In this way, speech can be considered both expressive and impressive, because it is used to convey meaning effects but it also impress listeners. Both segmental and prosodic elements are used to express meaning effects in speech. Among the prosodic elements vocal quality settings have received less attention regarding speech expressive uses. We argue that the investigation of the expressive uses of voice quality settings can be better approached if these settings are grouped according to their shared acoustic output properties and vocal tract configurations. Results of experiments relating symbolic uses of vocal qualities to semantic, acoustic and visual features by means of multidimensional analysis are reported and the expressive and impressive roles of vocal quality settings in spoken communication are discussed in relation to motivated links between sound forms and meaning effects.

Nasalization as a correlate of word-final voicing in English

Maintenance of laryngeal voicing during closure of word-final stops is believed to be articulatory challenging (Westbury & Keating, 1986). Additional articulatory maneuvers may help sustain voicing during final closure, and one such maneuver is pre-nasalization (Rothenberg, 1968). It has been demonstrated that pre-nasalization is associated with voicing in utterance-initial stops in French, Spanish, and to a lesser extent, in English where voiced stops are often realized without voicing during closure (Solé, 2011). Laryngeal contrast is typically maintained between word-final voiced and voiceless stops in English, and voicing is often found during closure. Therefore, articulatory maneuvers supporting the phonetic realization of this contrast are particularly important in final position. The proposed study examines the degree of nasalization in the vowel immediately preceding word-final stops in monosyllabic real words of American English (N = 18, monolingual speakers of Mid-western dialect). Preliminary examination of word-final stops in English indicates that pre-nasalization occurs for word-final voiced stops as well. Moreover, the presence of nasalization is predicted to correlate with the amount/duration of voicing during the stop closure of final consonant. The results will contribute to our understanding of the phonetics of word-final laryngeal contrast and potentially expand the inventory of secondary perceptual cues to word-final voicing.

Compensation for a lip-tube perturbation in 4-year-olds: Articulatory, acoustic, and perceptual data analyzed in comparison with adults

The nature of the speech goal in children was investigated in a study of compensation strategies for a lip-tube perturbation. Acoustic, articulatory, and perceptual analyses of the vowels /y/ and /u/ produced by ten 4-year-old French speakers and ten adult French speakers were conducted under two conditions: normal and with a large tube inserted between the lips. Ultrasound and acoustic recordings of isolated vowels were made in the normal condition before any perturbation, for each of the trials in the perturbed condition, and in the normal condition after the perturbed trials. Data revealed that adult participants moved their tongues in the perturbed condition more than children did. The perturbation was generally at least partly compensated for during the perturbed trials in adults, but children did not show a typical learning effect. In particular, unsystematic improvements were observed during the sequence of perturbed trials, and after-effects were not clear in the articulatory domain. This suggests that children may establish associative links between multisensory phonemic representations and articulatory maneuvers, but those links may mainly rely on trial-to-trial, error-based feedback correction mechanisms rather than on the internal model of the speech production apparatus, as they are in adults.

On distinguishing articulatory configurations and articulatory tasks: Tamil retroflex consonants

Speech production can be described in multiple coordinate frames: articulatory configurations, gestural tasks, and acoustic patterns. Examination of the achievement of retroflex stops and liquids in Tamil suggests that we must consider separately the gestural task of apical pre-palatal constriction and the articulatory maneuver to achieve the task. The maneuver of the tongue during retroflex consonants varies across vowel contexts. Specifically, in the symmetrical intervocalic contexts between back vowels /a/ and /u/, an apical pre-palatal constriction is achieved by curling back the tongue. In the context of high front vowel /i/, a laminal pre-palatal constriction is achieved by bunching the tongue. However, the location of retroflex consonant constriction within the vocal tract is consistent across all of these vowel contexts, suggesting that the constriction task remains the same. Variation in the articulatory configuration of the retroflex in the two contexts was quantified through Gaussian curvature functions at fourteen points along the tongue, sampled at evenly spaced points throughout the vocal tract, on every other gridline of a polar-rectangular grid in every frame in each utterance. The empirical results support the notion that the articulatory configuration coordinate frame and the gestural task frame provide separate, but related, descriptions of speech production.

A Comparison of Vowel Productions in Prelingually Deaf Children Using Cochlear Implants, Severe Hearing-Impaired Children Using Conventional Hearing Aids and Normal-Hearing Children

Objective: The purpose of this study was to compare vowel productions by deaf cochlear implant (CI) children, hearing-impaired hearing aid (HA) children and normal-hearing (NH) children. Patients and Methods: 73 children [mean age: 9;14 years (years;months)] participated: 40 deaf CI children, 34 moderately to profoundly hearing-impaired HA children and 42 NH children. For the 3 corner vowels [a], [i] and [u], F₁, F₂ and the intrasubject SD were measured using the Praat software. Spectral separation between these vowel formants and vowel space were calculated. Results: The significant effects in the CI group all pertain to a higher intrasubject variability in formant values, whereas the significant effects in the HA group all pertain to lower formant values. Both hearing-impaired subgroups showed a tendency toward greater intervowel distances and vowel space. Conclusion: Several subtle deviations in the vowel production of deaf CI children and hearing-impaired HA children could be established, using a well-defined acoustic analysis. CI children as well as HA children in this study tended to overarticulate, which hypothetically can be explained by a lack of auditory feedback and an attempt to compensate it by proprioceptive feedback during articulatory maneuvers.

Sensorimotor maps and vowel development in English, Greek, and Korean: A cross-linguistic perceptual categorization study.

Learning to speak involves learning the association between different articulatory maneuvers and their associated auditory-perceptual characteristics. These associations may change over the course of development as a consequence of the nonlinearities inherent in vocal-tract growth. A set of recent studies by Ménard and colleagues has examined these developmental changes by studying adults’ categorizations of synthesized vowels based on an articulatory model of the growing vocal tract. These have shown that vowels modeled on younger vocal tracts tend to be perceived as more front than those modeled on older vocal tracts. They have also shown language-specificity in the vowels that are identified in growing vocal tracts, with French listeners labeling fewer sounds as /u/ than English ones, presumably because the high-vowel space of French includes three vowels /i y u/, while English has only two. The current experiment expands on this by examining the perception of synthesized vowels based on seven vocal-tract growth stages by speakers of three languages with very different vowel systems, American English, Korean (seven vowels), and modern Greek (five vowels). Preliminary analyses show language-specific patterns in the perception of vowels in developing vocal tracts. [work supported by NIDCD 02932 and NSF grants BCS0729140 and BCS0729277]

Variation in stop consonant voicing in two regional varieties of American English

This study is an acoustic investigation of the nature and extent of consonant voicing of the stop /b/ in two dialectal varieties of American English spoken in south-central Wisconsin and western North Carolina. The stop /b/ occurred at the juncture of two words such as small bids, in a position between two voiced sonorants, i.e. the liquid /l/ and a vowel. Twenty women participated, ten representing the Wisconsin and ten the North Carolina variety, respectively. Significant dialectal differences were found in the voicing patterns. The Wisconsin stop closures were usually not fully voiced and terminated in a complete silence followed by a closure release whereas North Carolina speakers produced mostly fully voiced closures. Further dialectal differences included the proportion of closure voicing as a function of word emphasis. For Wisconsin speakers, the proportion of closure voicing was smallest when the word was emphasized and it was greatest in non-emphatic positions. For North Carolina speakers, the degree of word emphasis did not have an effect on the proportion of closure voicing. The results suggest different mechanisms by which closure voicing is maintained in these two dialects, pointing to active articulatory maneuvers in North Carolina speakers and passive in Wisconsin speakers.

Articulatory Configuration and Pitch in a Classically Trained Soprano Singer

Previous studies suggest that singers modify articulation to avoid that the pitch frequency F0 exceeds the normal value of the first formant F1(Normal). Using magnetic resonance imaging at a rate of 5 frames/s, articulation was analyzed in a professional soprano singing an ascending triad pattern from C4 to G5 (262-784Hz) on the vowels /i, e, u, o, a/. Lip and jaw opening and tongue dorsum height were measured and analyzed as function of pitch. Four or five semitones below the pitch where F0=F1(Normal) the tongue dorsum height was reduced in /i, e, u, a/, whereas in /o/ the lip opening was widened and in /a/ also the jaw opening was widened. At higher pitches, the jaw opening was widened in all vowels. These articulatory maneuvers are likely to raise F1 in these vowels.

Possible mechanisms of enhancement and multiplicity of cues

It has been proposed that phonological contrasts are phonetically realized not only by their primary articulations, but often also by enhancing gestures [Kingston & Diehl ‘‘Phonetic knowledge,’’ Language, 70, 419–454 (1994); Stevens & Keyser, ‘‘Primary features and their enhancement in consonants,’’ Language, 65, 81–106 (1989)]. Meanwhile, enhancement appears to parallel the well‐known phenomenon of multiplicity of cues in speech perception [Lisker ‘‘Voicing in English: Acatologue of acoustic features signaling /b/ versus /p/ in trochees.’’ Lang. Speech, 29, 3–11 (1986)]. An interesting question is therefore whether the two are one and the same. By a narrow definition, only articulatory maneuvers not obligated by the articulatory gestures of the phonetic units in question play an enhancing role. Thus not all cues that benefit perception are generated for the sake of enhancement. On the other hand, there may indeed be cases where genuine enhancement occurs, for which a further question is why is it needed in the first place? One possibility is that enhancement is not only for resisting noise in the speech environment, but also for handling the competition among communicative functions that are transmitted in parallel. That is, multiple communicative functions often share the same acoustic/articulatory dimension and such functional crowding may create the need to exploit additional means of encoding. If so, both enhancement and multiplicity of cues could be part of a live process that maintains the effectiveness of speech communication.

A parametric model of the vocal tract area function for vowel and consonant simulation

A model of the vocal-tract area function is described that consists of four tiers. The first tier is a vowel substrate defined by a system of spatial eigenmodes and a neutral area function determined from MRI-based vocal-tract data. The input parameters to the first tier are coefficient values that, when multiplied by the appropriate eigenmode and added to the neutral area function, construct a desired vowel. The second tier consists of a consonant shaping function defined along the length of the vocal tract that can be used to modify the vowel substrate such that a constriction is formed. Input parameters consist of the location, area, and range of the constriction. Location and area roughly correspond to the standard phonetic specifications of place and degree of constriction, whereas the range defines the amount of vocal-tract length over which the constriction will influence the tract shape. The third tier allows length modifications for articulatory maneuvers such as lip rounding/spreading and larynx lowering/raising. Finally, the fourth tier provides control of the level of acoustic coupling of the vocal tract to the nasal tract. All parameters can be specified either as static or time varying, which allows for multiple levels of coarticulation or coproduction.

Simulation of VCV syllables with a parametric area function model of the vocal tract

A model of the vocal tract area function has been developed that consists of three tiers. The first tier is a vowel substrate defined by a system of spatial eigenmodes determined from MRI and/or x-ray microbeam data and a neutral area function. The input parameters to this first tier are coefficient values that, when multiplied by the appropriate eigenmode and added to the neutral area function, construct a desired vowel. The second tier consists of a Gaussian shaping function defined along the length of the vocal tract that modifies the vowel substrate such that a constriction is formed. Input parameters consist of the location, area, and range of the constriction. Location and area roughly correspond to the standard phonetic notions of place and degree of constriction while range defines the amount of vocal tract length over which the constriction will influence the tract shape. The third tier allows length modifications for articulatory maneuvers such as lip rounding/spreading and larynx lowering/raising. All parameters can be specified either as static or time-varying, which allows for multiple levels of coarticulation to be produced. The model will be discussed and then used to simulate several VCV syllables. [Work supported by NIH R01-DC04789.]

Accounting for the instability of Palenquero voiced stops

This paper presents an analysis of the patterns exhibited by Palenquero voiced stops, which reveals that there is a close connection between spirantization, prenasalization, flapping, and lateralization as they are articulatory maneuvers that a language may use to reduce the effort cost of implementing underlying voiced stops. Spirantization, prenasalization, and lateralization facilitate the production of voicing by allowing venting through one of the valves that separate the supraglottal cavity from the atmosphere. Flapping, on the other hand, yields this effect by reducing the temporal coordinates of the constriction target. The consequences that these articulatory adjustments have for the production of voicing are captured within the framework of Optimality Theory (Prince, Alan, Smolensky, Paul, 1993. Optimality Theory: Constraint Interaction in Generative Grammar. Ms., Technical Report No.2 of the Rutgers Center for Cognitive Science, Rutgers University) through a system of interacting constraints where L azy, a principle that embodies the tendency to reduce articulatory effort (Kirchner, Robert, 1995. Contrastiveness is an epiphenomenonas of constraint ranking. Rutgers Optimality Archive, 51-0295; Kirchner, Robert, 1998. An Effort-based Approach to Consonant Lenition. Doctoral dissertation, Rutgers Optimality Archive, 246-0898), rivals with I dent (Feature), the drive to preserve underlying feature specifications [University of Massachusetts Occasional Papers, 18 (1995) 249]. Central to this analysis is also the view that the sound component of a language may comprise several co-phonologies (Inkelas, Sharon, Orhan Orgun, C., Zoll, Cheryl, 1996. Exceptions and static prohonological patterns: cophonologies vs. prespecification. Rutgers Optimality Archive 124-0496; Inkelas, Sharon, Orhan Orgun, C., Zoll, Cheryl, 1997. The implications of lexical exceptions for the nature of grammar. In: Roca, Iggy (Ed.), Derivations and Constraints in Phonology. Oxford University Press, New York, pp. 393–418), some of which are restricted to certain morphemes. This is used to account for the unpredictability and optionality exhibited by some of these processes.

Speech production impairments following left and right hemisphere stroke

A speech production impairment can occur following damage to either the left or right hemisphere. The nature of the impairment, however, differs depending on which hemisphere is damaged and within the left hemisphere, whether the damage is to the anterior or posterior language areas. This paper reviews the recent literature on the types of speech production impairments that follow damage to the left and right cerebral hemispheres. Damage to the left hemisphere anterior language area causes primarily a phonetic impairment, i.e. a deficit in executing the articulatory maneuvers of sound production with a preserved ability to select the correct sound. Damage to the left hemisphere posterior language area causes primarily a phonological impairment, i.e. a deficit in the correct selection of a sound with an intact ability to implement the articulatory maneuvers for that incorrect sound. Damage to the right hemisphere can cause a speech production problem to the prosodic aspects of language. These differences have direct implications for the theraputic remediation of these speech production impairments.

Speech timing in ataxic disorders: sentence production and rapid repetitive articulation.

We studied syllabic timing in patients with ataxia (10 with cerebellar atrophy, 6 with Friedreich's ataxia) under two conditions: in a "natural" sentence production context and in the context of a rapid syllable repetition task. The two tasks included comparable articulatory maneuvers. We measured syllable durations from the speech signal and analyzed variables describing average syllabic rate and within-trial variation of syllable durations. Among the observed measures, slowed syllable repetition was a particularly powerful predictor of the severity of dysarthric impairment. In sentence production, patients often performed at normal syllabic rates. Irregular pacing of syllable repetitions was frequent. Different patterns of between-articulator variation emerged in the two tasks. All patients except one were slower in rapid repetitive articulation than in sentence production. These data suggest that sentence production and rapid repetitive articulation are governed by basically different motor processes. The disproportionate slowing of ataxic patients in the repetitive task can be ascribed to adaptation to novel motor tasks being impaired in cerebellar disease.

The curious case of English /w/ and /y/

English /w/ and /y/ are often identified phonetically with /u/ and /i/: /w/ and /u/ involve dorso-velar constriction and lip rounding, /y/ and /i/ raising of the tongue toward the palate without rounding. Although the glides are thus more or less equated with the vowels, most linguists keep /w, y/ apart from /u, i/. The justification is that /w, y/ are nonsyllabic ‘‘glides,’’ whereas /u, i/ are not. As a phonetic basis for keeping /w, y/ and /u, i/ apart, this is not very compelling. Aside from the fact that the articulatory postures for /w, y/ may not always be identical with those for /u, i/, the phonological argument advanced here is that /w/ differs from /u/ in being distinctively rounded, but not distinctively dorso-velar, while /y/ is distinctively palatal, but not distinctively unrounded. In fact, the same articulatory configuration, that of a rounded palatal [inverted aitch], is differently interpreted in the contexts /i–i/ and /u–u/, so that [i(inverted aitch)i] is /iwi/, while [u(inverted aitch)u] is /uyu/. Thus the same vocal tract configuration, reflected in an identical F pattern, is differently interpreted in the two vocalic contexts. It would seem that the listener knows that it was achieved by two quite different articulatory maneuvers. [Work supported by NIH Grant HD-01994 to Haskins Labs.]