Like any other skilled activity, speech production requires the intricate coordination of several different subsystems. For speech, these subsystems are the respiratory system, the larynx, and the different parts of the supralaryngeal vocal tract. Our proposed experiments will help to uncover the nature of this coordination, both within and across these subsystems, through careful and detailed observations of articulator movements using state-of-the-art technologies. We will address the problem of coordination and sequencing of articulatory movements by instructed variation of phonetic context, stress, and prosody. These experimental manipulations will enable us to examine how relatively constant communicative ends are achieved by different means in speech. That is, even in the face of these linguistic/performance variations, the acoustic signal must stay within certain limits given its' status as a vehicle for transmitting messages. The proposed experiments will study, in populations of normal adult speakers, the control of oral closure and constriction for stops and fricatives in a wide variety of segmental and suprasegmental contexts. The kinematics of tongue movements used for shaping the vocal tract in the production of diphthongs will be examined to collect baseline data, since there is virtually no articulatory data on these sounds. The experiments will also examine the temporal coordination of the lips and the tongue, and how their kinematics and timing are affected by phonetic context. Together, the results of these experiments will contribute important articulatory data from several speakers. Such data are not only necessary for the development of computational models of the vocal tract, but will also serve as references for comparison with the speech of disordered populations.

Agency
National Institute of Health (NIH)
Institute
National Institute on Deafness and Other Communication Disorders (NIDCD)
Type
Research Project (R01)
Project #
5R01DC000865-09
Application #
6634448
Study Section
Special Emphasis Panel (ZRG1-BBBP-7 (01))
Program Officer
Shekim, Lana O
Project Start
1990-09-30
Project End
2006-03-31
Budget Start
2003-04-01
Budget End
2005-03-31
Support Year
9
Fiscal Year
2003
Total Cost
$276,691
Indirect Cost
Name
Haskins Laboratories, Inc.
Department
Type
DUNS #
060010147
City
New Haven
State
CT
Country
United States
Zip Code
06511
Lofqvist, Anders (2011) Vowel-related tongue movements in speech: straight or curved paths? (L). J Acoust Soc Am 129:1149-52
Lucero, Jorge C; Koenig, Laura L; Lourenco, Kelem G et al. (2011) A lumped mucosal wave model of the vocal folds revisited: recent extensions and oscillation hysteresis. J Acoust Soc Am 129:1568-79
Lofqvist, Anders (2009) Vowel-to-vowel coarticulation in Japanese: the effect of consonant duration. J Acoust Soc Am 125:636-9
Koenig, Laura L; Lucero, Jorge C; Mencl, W Einar (2008) Laryngeal and aerodynamic adjustments for voicing versus devoicing of /h/: a within-speaker study. J Voice 22:709-20
Lofqvist, Anders (2007) Tongue movement kinematics in long and short Japanese consonants. J Acoust Soc Am 122:512-18
Lucero, Jorge C; Koenig, Laura L (2007) On the relation between the phonation threshold lung pressure and the oscillation frequency of the vocal folds. J Acoust Soc Am 121:3280-3
Lofqvist, Anders (2006) Interarticulator programming: effects of closure duration on lip and tongue coordination in Japanese. J Acoust Soc Am 120:2872-83
Koenig, Laura L; Mencl, W Einar; Lucero, Jorge C (2005) Multidimensional analyses of voicing offsets and onsets in female speakers. J Acoust Soc Am 118:2535-50
Lucero, Jorge C; Koenig, Laura L (2005) Phonation thresholds as a function of laryngeal size in a two-mass model of the vocal folds. J Acoust Soc Am 118:2798-801
Lofqvist, Anders (2005) Lip kinematics in long and short stop and fricative consonants. J Acoust Soc Am 117:858-78

Showing the most recent 10 out of 28 publications