The articulatory settings of bilingual Canadian

English-French speakers

Ultrafest III - Apr.14, 2005

Tucson, AZ

Ian Wilson, Bryan Gick, Fiona Campbell,

& Eric Vatikiotis-Bateson

University of British Columbia

Use of ultrasound for speech research

• Becoming much more common but still has unresolved methodological issues

• Choice of methodology depends on:– Experiment setting (lab vs. field)– Type of subjects (adult, child, impaired, …)– Type of study (biofeedback, etc.)– [Bryan Gick will expand on this tomorrow]

The present study

• Normal adults

• Speakers of English & Québécois-French

• Data collected in a laboratory

Methodological issues• What to measure?

– Track given point on tongue? (EMA; x-ray microbeam)– Shape of tongue surface in 2D, 3D– Cross-sectional area under curve of tongue– Relative timing of tongue gestures– Distance from tongue surface to fixed point

Measuring tongue surface to fixed point• What fixed point?

– Transducer surface / centre– Opposing surface (i.e. palate, pharyngeal wall)

Tongue to fixed point: more issues

• Need to make opposing surface visible:– Have subject swallow– CT scan

• Measurement location based on:– Location of opposing surface point– Location of tongue gesture

• Controlling and/or correcting for head movement relative to probe:

1. Optotrak/video 2. Helmet 3. Restraint

• Data extraction:– By hand– Software for edge detection / curve fitting

Back to the present study

• Articulatory Setting (AS)– When speaking a foreign language, one’s

articulators seem to have a whole different underlying posture

Different languages sound different

• Why??

– Different phonemes + …

– Different phonologies + …

– Different articulatory settings• “gross oral posture and mechanics” of a

language - Honikman (1964)

Implications of language-specific AS (1)

• Second language acquisition– Quantitative evidence to support newer L2

teaching methodologies (Mompeán-González, 2003)

• Speech motor control– If AS is weighted average of postures for all

phonemes in a language (Laver, 2000), then supports view of AS being functionally determined, reducing travel cost of articulators (Rosenbaum et al., 1995)

• Models of speech production– de Bot’s (1992) model of bilingual speech

production contains articulator (Levelt, 1989) that uses set of non-language specific speech motor plans

• Predicts bilinguals have 1 AS shared between languages & could be based on type frequency

• Hesitation pauses & schwa– AS may be reflected in these (e.g. AS for French

has protruded lips & schwa is rounded)

Implications of language-specific AS (2)

• Development of languages– Esling (2000): possible that “instances of

language change are accomplished by slightly altering AS, which in turn produces minute, sub-phonemic changes in the phonetic quality of certain susceptible segments.”

Implications of language-specific AS (3)

How to measure AS

• Gick, Wilson, Koch & Cook (2004 Phonetica)

– Link AS to inter-speech posture (Barry, 1992; Gick, 2002) reducing segmental interference

Gick et al. measurements taken

• 1 = pharynx width*• 2 = VPP width• 3 = TB to palate*• 4 = TT to palate*• 5 = upper central

incisors to jaw• 6 = upper lip protrusion*• 7 = lower lip protrusion*

* Significantly different across languages

AS in bilinguals

• Why bilinguals?

– Within a speaker, can compare across languages without worrying about physiological differences

– Bilinguals may economize in their tongue gestures (Wilson, 2003) and VOT (Watson, 1990, 1991)

• Is AS like a speech target in the sense that economy can play a part?

– If AS is simply functional, this predicts speaking mode (bilingual vs. monolingual) will affect AS (Grosjean, 1998)

Subjects

• 10 monolingual Canadian-English speakers

• 10 monolingual Quebecois-French speakers

• 10 bilingual English-French speakers

Stimuli

• Monolingual subject trials:– At least 6 blocks of 30 utterances (=180 possible rest

positions per subject)

• Bilingual subject trials:– 2 English blocks, 2 French blocks, 2 mixed language

blocks– Before mixed language blocks, subject is informed that

language of the next sentence is randomly selected

• Phonetic context of first and last syllables controlled for as much as possible across languages

Method: Experimental set-up

Method: Optotrak marker set-up

Ultrasound data for MLD (bilingual)

• Bilingual trial; B-mode & M-mode ultrasound

QuickTime™ and aDV - NTSC decompressor

are needed to see this picture.

Method: Correction for head movement• Palate trace done after swallow; can then measure

shortest distance from alveolar ridge to tongue

• Optotrak tracks head as rigid body; probe is fixed & position is known by Optotrak

• Rotate/translate palate trace about probe (MATLAB…)

Results for MLD - tongue tip

• Tongue tip to alveolar ridge distance

– English:• mean = 21.13 pix• (N=35; std dev=2.91)

– French:• mean = 17.44 pix• (N=42; std dev=3.81)

– Bilingual mode:• mean = 23.06 pix• (N=43; std dev=3.09)E F Bil

Group means &95% confidence intervals)

Results for MLD - vertical lip aperture• Vertical lip aperture

– English:• mean = 23.13 mm• (N=20; std dev=1.88)

– French:• mean = 23.47 mm• (N=20; std dev=1.12)

– Bilingual:• mean = 23.82 mm• (N=21; std dev=1.30)

• No significant differences

• Horizontal lip aperture

– English:• mean = 50.52 mm• (N=20; std dev=0.76)

– French:• mean = 51.60 mm• (N=20; std dev=1.68)

– Bilingual:• mean = 49.79 mm• (N=21; std dev=0.40)

Results for MLD - horizontal lip aperture

E F BilGroup means &

95% confidence intervals)

Significance of findings so far• Support for existence of language-specific AS;

not contextually determined

• AS in bilingual mode does not fall between 2 monolingual mode settings

– implies AS is not determined simply by motor control constraints such as articulator “travel cost”

• N.B.: speech is a low-energy system

– when language target unknown, subject’s inter-speech posture is closer to absolute rest position (i.e. a position out of speech mode)

• Seemingly uneconomic

Next Steps• What is the relationship of type & token frequency

to AS?

• Is AS different for natural speech vs. read speech? Nonsense words vs. real words? (i.e. is it task dependent)

• What is the relationship between L2 pronunciation proficiency and AS?

• What is perceptually salient in AS (i.e. if learned, how is it learned?) Can it all be read in the face?!

Thank you!

• Thanks to:

Jason Chang

Shaffiq Rahemtullah

Doug Pulleyblank

and all our cooperative subjects.

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