Chapter 14 Articulatory Movements and Phrase Boundaries

Chapter 14 Articulatory Movements and Phrase Boundaries
The present study
the systematic effect of two prosodic parameters
syllable duration reflecting magnitude of the syllable
magnitude of the gap between two syllables on the strength of consonantal gestures
14.2 The converter/ distributor model
The converter/distributor (C/D) model
a non-traditional relatively powerful model of phonetic organization that uses syllables instead of phonemes as the concatenative units of speech signals
it represents the rhythmic organization of an utterance by a magnitude-controlled syllable-boundary pulse train.
Syllable duration
computed based on the magnitude distribution of the syllable pulses.
Fujimura’s suggestion
suggested that a certain aspect of articulatory movement patterns was characteristically constant for a given demisyllable, even across varying stress conditions.
Fujimura’s theory
the theory assumed, as did Ohman that a sequence of vowel gestures for syllable nuclei formed a slowly changing syllabic gesture as an aspect of what is called base function, on which local quick gestures for consonants are superimposed, according to syllabic feature specifications.
14.2.1 Phrase-final elongation
Phrase-final elongation
phrase-final elongation is a phonetic-boundary effect that appears mainly as rhyme elongation in phrase-final position.
the elongation could be modeled as an expansion of the time scale, slowing down all gestures in the same way.
the elongation could be a matter of inserting a specific boundary duration, perhaps implemented as an adjustment of the proportionality coefficient in the relation.
the elongation could create a pause, whether it is a period of silence or a period filled with spilled over voicing and other articulatory gestures.
The present study aims
verifying previous results
considered as a measure of the syllable magnitude and of gap duration on speed of crucial articulator movement
14.3 Method
14.3.1 Data
resource
were acquired at the University of Wisconsin by the X-ray Microbeam system
14.3.2 Subjects
The subjects were three native speakers of Midwest American English, two males and one female.
14.3.3 Data analysis
14.3.3.1 Analysis of iceberg invariance
Iceberg curves
Iceberg curves were measured and extracted from the tracings of the crucial articulator production of the digits 9 and 5 in the dialogs.
The objectives of corpus
the corpus was designed in order to observe variation of prosodic patterns.
Excursion
Excursion defined as the difference of pellet height values between the beginning and ending values of each visually determined demisyllabic movement curve.