Coarticulatory Effects Research Articles

The effect of segmental makeup on Mandarin tone coarticulation

The effect of segmental make-ups on tonal coarticulation was investigated in Mandarin. Target syllables differ in coda (no coda, alveolar nasal or velar nasal) and initial sonorancy (obstruent or sonorant) were embedded in trisyllabic non-words templates, in the form of trisyllabic names. Twenty native speakers were recorded and the F0 contours of all syllables were measured at a 10-ms time step. The coarticulation effect of four Mandarin tones are examined in three different positions with 4 (initial position), 16 (medial position), and 4 (final position) tonal contexts. Moreover, the phonetic variations of each tone in different prosodic positions were examined. The preliminary results indicate that the coarticulation effect is less prominent when intervened by obstruents whereas nasal codas amplify the effect. The realization of this modulating effect on the directionality of tonal coarticulation (carryover and anticipatory) will be discussed. The magnitude of coarticulation in compatible (adjacent tones have similar registers) and conflicting (adjacent tones with large register difference) environments will also be compared.

The perceptibility of long-distance coarticulation in speech and sign

This paper describes a cross-modality investigation of the perception of long-distance coarticulation. We present the results of a sign study investigating anticipatory location-to-location (LL) effects in American Sign Language (ASL), and compare these findings with results of analogous research on anticipatory vowel-to-vowel (VV) effects in English. While listeners in speech studies showed great sensitivity to coarticulatory effects, relatively little evidence of sensitivity to coarticulation was found among sign study participants, even for the closest-distance effects. This was the case for both signing and sign-naive subjects. In addition, deaf subjects’ results were not significantly influenced by their ages of acquisition of ASL. These results parallel those of earlier research finding that LL coarticulatory effects in ASL appear to be weaker than the coarticulatory effects that are present in speech, at least in the contexts examined here. The outcome of this perception study may thus be due to the apparent weakness of coarticulatory information in the sign signal relative to the speech signal: to the extent that such information is available, users will tend to make use of it, as appears to be the case in speech perception. Where such information is not generally available, users will be less accustomed to making use of it even in cases in which it is present

An ultrasound study of lingual coarticulation in /sV/ syllables produced by adults and typically developing children

According to the Degree of Articulatory Constraint model of lingual coarticulation, the consonant /s/ has some scope for tongue adaptation to neighbouring vowels, since the tongue dorsum is not directly involved in constriction formation for this consonant. The present study aimed to establish whether the tongue shape for /s/ in consonant–vowel syllables was influenced by the nature of the following vowel, in Scottish-English–speaking children and adults. Ultrasound tongue imaging was used to establish the presence or otherwise of a vowel effect at the consonant midpoint, by measuring differences between the consonant tongue contours in different vowel environments. In adults, the vowel pairs /a/–/i/, /a/–/u/ and /i/–/u/ exerted significant coarticulatory effects on /s/. In children, no significant effects on /s/ were observed. Greater within-speaker variability in lingual articulation was found in children than in adults. The reduced ability of children to anticipate the tongue configuration of a following vowel whilst simultaneously implementing an initial /s/ sound could be explained by lesser differential control of tip/blade and tongue body.

Clustering Persian viseme using phoneme subspace for developing visual speech application

There are numerous multimedia applications such as talking head, lip reading, lip synchronization, and computer assisted pronunciation training, which entices researchers to bring clustering and analyzing viseme into focus. With respect to the fact that clustering and analyzing visemes are language dependent process, we concentrated our research on Persian language, which indeed has suffered from the lack of such study. To this end, we proposed a novel adopting image-based approach which consists of four main steps including (a) extracting the lip region, (b) obtaining Eigenviseme of each phoneme considering coarticulation effect, (c) mapping each viseme into its subspace and other phonemes' subspaces in order to create the distance matrix so as to calculate the distance between viseme's cluster, and finally (d) comparing similarity of each viseme based on the weight value of reconstructed one. In order to indicate the robustness of the proposed algorithm, three sets of experiments were conducted on Persian and English databases in which Consonant/Vowel and Consonant/Vowel/Consonant syllables were examined. The results indicated that the proposed method outperformed the observed state-of-the-art algorithms in feature extraction, and it had a comparable efficiency in generating adequate clusters. Moreover, obtained results reached a milestone in grouping Persian visemes with respect to the perceptual test given by volunteers.

Morpho-phonological levels and grammaticalization in Karimojong: A review of the evidence

An analysis of the affixation processes and the phonological rules governing [ATR] harmony in Karimojong verbs permits the organization of derivational processes into three levels. On each level specific groups of morphemes are affixed and the resultant derived words undergo defined sets of phonological processes. On Level 1 a feature filling [±ATR] harmony rule applies, in which the [ATR] feature spreads bi-directionally from the principal root vowel across the root and all Level 1 affixes. However, there are also localized disharmonic domains created by phonologized co-articulation effects of consonants and dissimilation rules for vowels. On Level 2, suffixation of Tense-Mood-Aspect (TMA) markers at the right edge of the verbal complex triggers [+ATR] feature spreading leftward across the derived word. On Level 3 affixation does not trigger [ATR] harmony processes, and both affix vowels and the derivational complexes to which they are added retain their [ATR] features. Some Karimojong affixes exhibit behaviors characteristic of two different levels, depending on context; these affixes are proposed to be in transition between levels. The three levels are proposed to result from diachronic evolution, and their relative chronological development can be established by (1) correspondences to landmarks within the cross-linguistically attested agreement system grammaticalization cline, which groups affixes according to ordering universals, and (2) the existence of successive evolutionary cycles of frequentive morphology. A model of the morphology-phonology interface is proposed in which linguistic structure internal to the morpheme channels the spread of [ATR] features. The model provides an explanation for surface irregularities that originated at the time of areal vowel mergers in Nilotic languages (Dimmendaal, 2002).

A method for generation of Mandarin F0 contours based on tone nucleus model and superpositional model

A new method was proposed for synthesizing sentence fundamental frequency (F0) contours of Mandarin speech. The method is based on representing a sentence logarithmic F0 contour as a superposition of tone components on phrase components, as in the case of the generation process model (F0 model). However, the method is not fully depending on the model in that tone components are generated in a corpus-based way by concatenating F0 patterns predicted for constituting syllables. Furthermore, the prediction is done only for the stable part of syllable tone component, known as tone nucleus. The entire tone components were obtained by concatenating the predicted patterns. Since effect of tone coarticulation is minor for tone nuclei, as compared to conventional methods of handling full syllable F0 contours, a better prediction is possible especially when the size of training corpus is limited. While tone components are highly language specific, phrase components are assumed to be more language universal: analogy from a control scheme of phrase components developed for a language may applicable for other languages. Also, phrase components covers a wider range (phrase, clause, etc.) of speech and is tightly related to higher linguistic information (syntax), and, therefore, concatenation of short F0 contour fragments predicted in a corpus-based method will not be appropriate. Taking these into consideration, rules similar to Japanese were constructed to control phrase commands, from which phrase components were generated with simple mathematical calculations in the framework of the generation process model. There is a tight relation between phrase and tone components, and, therefore, both components cannot be generated independently. To ensure the correct relation be held in the synthesized F0 contour, a two-step scheme was developed, where information of generated phrase components was utilized for the prediction of tone components. A listening test was conducted for speech synthesized using F0 contours generated by the developed method. Synthetic speech sounded highly natural, showing the validity of the method. Furthermore, it was shown through an experiment of word emphasis that flexible F0 control was possible by the proposed method.

An Investigation on Speech Perception Under Effects of Coarticulation

In this paper, we investigated the speech perception under effects of coarticulation within syllables, including estimating the nuclei and coarticulated transition intervals of phonemes, and investigating the perception of nuclei and coarticulated transition intervals of phonemes within syllables. To complete these objectives, we firstly proposed the folded spectral transition measure to estimate the boundary points between the nuclei interval and coarticulated transition intervals. Then, we conducted experiments to investigate the syllable identification and syllable quality evaluation under effects of coarticulation. The experimental results show that human can identify the syllables with the retaining intervals equal or wider the coarticulated transition intervals. Besides, the experimental results show that the nuclei intervals are still important for speech quality perception; the quality of truncated syllables retaining the two phoneme nucleus and coarticulated transition interval between the two phonemes within syllable is equivalent with the quality of original two-phoneme syllables.

On the Stability of Spectral Targets under Effects ofCoarticulation

Coarticulation is a phonological phenomenon, always occurring in all sequences of sounds not separated by pauses. Analyses in coarticulation of speech reveal that articulation targets are incomplete in neutralized sound, and it is difficult to estimate incomplete articulatory targets of phonemes due to their sensitivity. In this paper, we firstly proposed a acoustical model of coarticulation of phonemes within syllables. After that, we investigated the stability of spectral targets affected by the vowel neutralization phenomenon. The experimental results show that the proposed coarticulation model decomposed speech into context-insensitive event targets, which are close with articulatory targets, and the context-sensitive event functions, which closely represent the movements between the adjacent targets. In addition, the PLP-LSF was shown as a stable spectral target against vowel neutralization phenomenon in our proposed coarticulation model.

The Relationship between the Perception and Production of Coarticulation during a Sound Change in Progress

The present study is concerned with lax /u/-fronting in Standard British English and in particular with whether this sound change in progress can be attributed to a waning of the perceptual compensation for the coarticulatory effects of context. Younger and older speakers produced various monosyllables in which /u/ occurred in different symmetrical consonantal contexts. The same speakers participated in a forced-choice perception experiment in which they categorized a synthetic /I-u/ continuum embedded in fronting /s_t/ and non-fronting /w_l/ contexts. /u/ was shown to be fronted for the younger age group in both production and perception. Although there was no conclusive evidence that younger listeners compensated less for coarticulation than did older listeners, the size of the coarticulatory influence of consonantal context on /u/ in perception was found to be smaller than in production for the younger than for the older group. The findings are consistent with a model of sound change in which the perceptual compensation for coarticulation wanes ahead of changes that take place to coarticulatory relationships in speech production. As a result, the perception and production of coarticulation may be unusually misaligned with respect to each other for some speaker-listeners participating in a sound change in progress.

Vowels of Upper Tanana Athabascan

This paper provides a detailed phonetic, synchronic description of the oral vowels of Upper Tanana, an Athabascan language spoken in eastern interior Alaska and the western Yukon Territory. Upper Tanana has, depending on the dialect, six or seven oral monophthongs that can be modified for (low) tone, nasalization, and length. Previous accounts are auditory. They disagree regarding the articulation of two of the vowels (which we represent as /ɘ/ and /ʌ/), and raise the question of whether ‘length’ indicates a quantity or a quality distinction. In contrast to earlier accounts, we provide acoustic measurements of F1, F2, and the duration of the vowels of two Alaskan dialects of Upper Tanana: Northway and Tetlin. We find that the phonetic realization of one of the vowels is quite different from the earlier auditory descriptions. For the other vowels and for the quantity distinction, our findings support earlier descriptions while supplying new details. Several co-articulation effects, previously undescribed, are also identified.

Tongue corticospinal modulation during attended verbal stimuli: Priming and coarticulation effects

Humans perceive continuous speech through interruptions or brief noise bursts cancelling entire phonemes. This robust phenomenon has been classically associated with mechanisms of perceptual restoration. In parallel, recent experimental evidence suggests that the motor system may actively participate in speech perception, even contributing to phoneme discrimination. In the present study we intended to verify if the motor system has a specific role in speech perceptual restoration as well. To this aim we recorded tongue corticospinal excitability during phoneme expectation induced by contextual information. Results showed that phoneme expectation determines an involvement of the individual's motor system specifically implicated in the production of the attended phoneme, exactly as it happens during actual listening of that phoneme, suggesting the presence of a speech imagery-like process. Very interestingly, this motoric phoneme expectation is also modulated by subtle coarticulation cues of which the listener is not consciously aware. Present data indicate that the rehearsal of a specific phoneme requires the contribution of the motor system exactly as it happens during the rehearsal of actions executed by the limbs, and that this process is abolished when an incongruent phonemic cue is presented, as similarly occurs during observation of anomalous hand actions. We propose that altogether these effects indicate that during speech listening an attentional-like mechanism driven by the motor system, based on a feed-forward anticipatory mechanism constantly verifying incoming information, is working allowing perceptual restoration.

A relevância do contexto lingüístico na aquisição da fonologia e nos desvios fonológicos do desenvolvimento: o exemplo da palatalização

Focusing the palatalization of coronal stops, a study with children acquiring Brazilian Portuguese, in normal and deviant process, makes clear a significant influence of the linguistic context in the behavior of consonantal segments, causing phonetic effects of co-articulation. In the analysis of the data, theoretical model based in constraints, as Optimality Theory, and dynamic model, as Articulatory Phonology, show more consistency in the explanation of context dependent phenomenon, like palatalization, than Autosegmental Theory, that demands a mixed solution, with the use of rules and also the use of output constraints.

Perception of long-distance coarticulation: An event-related potential and behavioral study

ABSTRACTIn this study we explore listeners' sensitivity to vowel to vowel (VV) coarticulation, using both event-related potential (ERP) and behavioral methodologies. The stimuli used were vowels “colored” by the coarticulatory influence of other vowels across one, three or five intervening segments. The paradigm used in the ERP portion of the study was intended to elicit the mismatch-negativity (MMN) component, a negative deflection typically seen at central midline scalp sites about 200 ms after the presentation of a “deviant” acoustic stimulus occurring among a train of “standard” acoustic stimuli. VV coarticulation at near and medium distances was associated with significant MMN-like effects, which however were not observed in response to the longest distance coarticulatory contrasts. Subjects' ERP results did not predict their performance on the behavioral task, which found evidence of listener sensitivity to even the furthest distance coarticulatory effects. Although the MMN has previously been shown to be sensitive to phonemic contrasts, this is the first study using ERP methodology to investigate the subphonemic processing associated with the perception of coarticulation.

Effects of Coarticulation, Prosody, and Noise Freshness on the Intelligibility of Digit Triplets in Noise

In a number of European countries, a functional self-test to screen for hearing impairment is available via telephone and the Internet. The tests estimate speech-reception thresholds using an adaptive procedure in which digit triplets are presented at varying signal-to-noise ratios. In different languages, the stimuli were created either with or without coarticulation; and some implementations use fresh noise samples, while others do not. The present investigation concerns the influence of coarticulation, prosody, and noise freshness on measured thresholds. We performed a laboratory study using 12 normal-hearing listeners. In a blocked design we compared speech-reception thresholds for conditions with and without fresh noise tokens. In each block we used three types of triplets: with coarticulation and prosody, with neither, and without coarticulation but with prosody. Thirty-six thresholds were recorded per subject, and they were analyzed using analyses of variance. The results showed no significant differences among the three triplet conditions. The freshness of the noise did not affect thresholds when, at least, a fresh noise token was used per threshold estimate (23 presentations). Scores dropped significantly when a whole experimental block was performed with a single noise token.

Corpus Based Statistical Analysis of Punjabi Syllables for Preparation of Punjabi Speech Database

Syllables preserve within unit co-articulation effects, which results syllables to be a good choice as speech unit for speech database of many languages. Punjabi is a syllabic language, so syllables have been selected as the basic speech unit for the preparation of speech database for Punjabi. In order to select a minimal syllable set covering almost whole Punjabi word set to be stored in the speech database, all the available Punjabi syllables have been statistically analyzed over a large Punjabi corpus having more than 104 million words. This statistical analysis reveals very interesting and important facts about the actual use of Punjabi syllables by its speaker and writers. From the results of this analysis a relatively smaller syllable set of about first ten thousand (0.86% of total available 1156740 syllables) most frequently occurring syllables having cumulative frequency of occurrence less than 99.81% have been selected. Also, frequency of occurrence of these syllables at the three positions (starting, middle and end) in the words of corpus has been obtained, for detailed storage and better utilization of these syllables in certain applications like Text-to-Speech synthesis.

Retroflex versus Bunched [r] in Compensation for Coarticulation

UC Berkeley Phonology Lab Annual Report (2011) Retroflex versus bunched [r] in compensation for coarticulation Keith Johnson UC Berkeley This paper presents data from two experiments that are problematic for the auditory spectral contrast theory of compensation for coarticulation, but are perfectly compatible with the gesture recovery theory. The experiments compare compensation for coarticulation effects in the perception of a [dɑ]-[ɡɑ] continuum produced by retroflex [r] context, versus the lack of an effect for a bunched [r] context. The key acoustic feature referenced by the spectral contrast theory (the lowered F3) is present in both bunched and retroflex [r]. In experiment 2, the F4 trajectory (a key acoustic correlate of retroflexion) is seen to modulate compensation for coarticulation. INTRODUCTION “Compensation for coarticulation” is the name of a phenomenon that has two explanations. In one theory (Holt, 1999; Lotto & Kluender, 1998), the effect is due to auditory spectral contrast as a context syllable interacts with a following target syllable in the auditory system. The main competing theory gave the phenomenon its name (Mann, 1980; Fowler, 2006). In this theory, the listener perceptually compensates for the coarticulation that typically occurs between the context syllable and the target syllable. Thus, the interaction between context and target reflects a perceptual gesture recovery process. The particular instance of compensation for coarticulation that is studied in this paper is the one reported by Mann (1980). The perceptual boundary on a stop place of articulation continuum from [dɑ] to [ɡɑ] is shifted by a preceding [ɑl] or [ɑr] context syllable. If the context syllable ends in [l] the boundary is shifted toward [d] - more of the tokens are perceived as [ɡɑ]. And, if the context syllable ends in [r], the boundary is shifted toward [ɡ] - more of the tokens are perceived as [dɑ]. The effect can be quite striking and makes an effective classroom demonstration of context effects in perception. Mann (1980) called this phenomenon “compensation for coarticulation” on the hypothesis that listeners “parse” the effects of coarticulation as they perceptually recover the intended gestures of the speaker. The idea is that because tongue position in [l] is more forward than it is in [r], a following ambiguous syllable on a [dɑ]-[ɡɑ] continuum will sound more like [dɑ] in the [ɑr] context because listeners can attribute some of the “retraction” of the ambiguous syllable to coarticulation with [r]. On the other hand, when the context syllable ends in [l] there is no such coarticulatory cause of the “retraction” of the ambiguous syllable, so it is heard as intentionally back and more like [ɡɑ]. Evidence for the gesture recovery interpretation (e.g. Fowler, Best, McRoberts, 1990; Fowler, Brown & Mann, 2000; Fowler, 2006) has been unconvincing. By this I mean that scholars who are not predisposed by training to see perceptual phenomena in terms of gesture recovery have remained

Acoustics and perception of emphasis in Urban Jordanian Arabic

Acoustic and perceptual effects of emphasis, a secondary articulation in the posterior vocal tract, were investigated in Urban Jordanian Arabic. Twelve speakers of Jordanian Arabic recorded both consonants and vowels of monosyllabic minimal CVC pairs containing plain or emphatic consonants in initial and final position to investigate the extent of coarticulatory effects of emphasis. In general, the acoustic correlates of emphasis include a raised F1, lowered F2, and raised F3 in the vowel adjacent to the emphatic consonant, consistent with a narrowing near the uvula. These effects are similar in magnitude for vowels following and preceding emphatic consonants. In addition, the spectral mean of emphatic stops, but not emphatic fricatives, was lower than that of plain consonants. A perception study with cross-spliced natural stimuli explored whether Arabic listeners’ recognition of emphasis is based on information in the target consonant or the rest of the word (vowel+non-target consonant). Results show that the rest of the word contributes significantly more to the perception of emphasis than the target consonant itself. Overall, the acoustic data and perceptual results will address the correlates of emphasis, spread of emphasis, and the asymmetry between stops and fricatives.

Central vowels in Central Arrernte: A spectrographic study of a small vowel system

In this study we examine the formant and duration patterns of the two central vowels, /ə/ and /ɐ/, in the Australian language Central Arrernte. The contrast between these two central vowels is minimal: there is no contrast in initial position, nor in final position. In medial position, /ə/ is higher in the vowel space and shorter in duration. /ə/ is not affected by metrical stress, although there is a tendency for /ɐ/ to be lower and/or longer for some speakers in this condition. Coarticulatory effects of adjacent consonants are observed at the vowel midpoint for both vowels, although /ə/ shows more variance according to consonant context. It is argued that the main function of the vowel in Central Arrernte is to provide formant cues for the adjacent consonants, given that this language is particularly rich in places of articulation.

Phonology and phonetics of epenthetic vowels in loanwords: Experimental evidence from Korean

This paper investigates acoustic properties of epenthetic vowels used in the adaptation of English loanwords with final obstruents in Korean (e.g. phokhi<folk, phochi<poach). An extensive analysis of spectral and durational properties of these vowels produced by six speakers of Seoul Korean reveals that loanword epenthesis is a categorical vowel insertion process. The quality of epenthetic vowels in the data was essentially identical to that of the native high vowels /i/ and /i/, depending on the place of articulation of the preceding consonant. Duration of epenthetic vowels was also similar to that of native vowels. These findings provide evidence for the phonological status of epenthesis and vowel coloring in loanwords into Korean, supporting some previous phonological accounts of the phenomenon, while questioning others. Importantly, the categorical vowel coloring in loanwords is different from gradient coarticulatory effects exerted by preceding consonants and non-adjacent vowels, which were also observed in the data. This underscores the importance of careful experimental investigation of vowel epenthesis, as a way of teasing apart phonological processes and phonetic effects.

Signs of the Time: Selected Papers from TISLR 2004 (review)

Reviewed by: Signs of the Time: Selected Papers from TISLR 2004 Petra Eccarius (bio) Signs of the Time: Selected Papers from TISLR 2004, ed. Josep Quer (Seedorf, Germany: Signum, 2008, 404 pp., paperback with CD Rom, EUR 54.00, ISBN 978-3-936675-22-1) Signs of the Time represents a select number of the eighty-five papers and posters presented at the eighth conference of Theoretical Issues in Sign Language Research (TISLR 8), which was held at the University of Barcelona, Spain, in the fall of 2004. Like the conference itself, the book offers a broad sampling of the state of sign language linguistics at that time by dealing with a wide variety of topics and languages. To that end, it includes seventeen chapters (grouped into six main themes) and covers research on at least sixteen different sign languages from around the world. Here I summarize these seventeen chapters (organized by theme) and provide my overall impressions of the book. Phonetics and Phonology The book begins with three chapters that address various aspects of phonetics and phonology. In the first chapter, Mauk, Lindblom, and Meier discuss an experimental study of “undershoot” (the failure to reach a phonetic target) in American Sign Language (ASL) locations as a consequence of various signing speeds and phonetic contexts. Not only do they show that phonetic rate effects are similar in both spoken and signed modalities (despite differences in articulators), but their results also suggest that all phonemic locations are not created equally [End Page 275] with regard to phonetic coarticulation effects (specifically, undershoot), which is similar to what happens across different consonants in spoken languages. Finally, they demonstrate that similar methodologies can be used to study these types of effects in both modalities. In the second chapter, Rozelle presents a comparison of the phonological parameters of handshape and location based on the dictionaries of four unrelated sign languages (ASL, Korean Sign Language [KSL], New Zealand Sign Language [NZSL], and Finnish Sign Language [SVK]). To do this, she uses quantitative methodology, specifically, a combination of statistics and information theory. Her analysis not only shows some potentially universal dependencies between the parameters but also suggests that many of the supposed universals (e.g., the limitation of handshape markedness to locations at the face and neck vs. those on the torso; cf. Battison 1978) are actually language specific and/or typological. She also alludes to other possible dependency relations that could be tested using similar methodology. In the final chapter of this section, Tyrone and Woll offer a case study of a native signer of British Sign Language (BSL) with early-onset Parkinson’s disease. Comparisons with previous literature examined a wide variety of complicating factors (e.g., speech vs. sign, ASL vs. BSL, between stages of the disease/age, medication status, and whether the subject was a native language user). Their results support earlier findings that the primary effect of Parkinson’s on the production of signs is articulatory laxing. In addition, as a contribution to future work, they emphasize the need to consider and/or control for as many factors as possible before making generalizations about the effects of Parkinson’s (or other such diseases). Intonation The next two chapters address the interaction between intonation and grammar. First, Dachikovsky compares the forms of neutral and counterfactual conditionals in Israeli Sign Language (ISL). In this work, she argues for an intonational/pragmatic analysis of the specific nonmanuals that mark these conditionals (e.g., brow raise and eye squint) rather than an exclusively syntactic interpretation. She focuses instead on the general pragmatic functions of these nonmanuals throughout the language. [End Page 276] Next, using Wilbur’s (1994, 2002) analysis of blinks as linguistic markers of intonational/syntactic boundaries as a starting point, Sze analyzes data from Hong Kong Sign Language (HKSL) to see whether the same patterns hold true. She finds that Wilbur’s classifications are not adequate to explain all of the blinks found in the HKSL data and proposes a modification of that classification to account for the blinks in her data. She also takes a closer look at the methodological questions involved in the study of blinks (the phases of a blink and...