A normative-speaker validation study of two indices developed to quantify tongue dorsum activity from midsagittal tongue shapes

• Published in: Clinical linguistics & phonetics 2013-07, Vol.27 (6-7), p.484-496
• Main Author: Zharkova, Natalia
• Format: Article
• Language: English
• Subjects: Adult; Adult and adolescent clinical studies; Adults; articulation; Articulation (Speech); Biological and medical sciences; coarticulation; Congenital Impairments; English; Female; Human Body; Humans; Language and communication disorders; Male; Medical sciences; Middle Aged; Phonemes; Phonetics; Psychology. Psychoanalysis. Psychiatry; Psychopathology. Psychiatry; Scores; Scotland; Speech - physiology; Speech Acoustics; Speech Articulation Tests - methods; Speech Articulation Tests - standards; Speech Impairments; speech production measurement; Speech Production Measurement - methods; Speech Production Measurement - standards; Standard Spoken Usage; Stimuli; Tongue - diagnostic imaging; Tongue - physiology; tongue dorsum; Ultrasonography; ultrasound tongue imaging; Vowels; Young Adult
• ISSN: 0269-9206; 1464-5076
• DOI: 10.3109/02699206.2013.778903

This study reported adult scores on two measures of tongue shape, based on midsagittal tongue shape data from ultrasound imaging. One of the measures quantified the extent of tongue dorsum excursion, and the other measure represented the place of maximal excursion. Data from six adult speakers of Scottish Standard English without speech disorders were analyzed. The stimuli included a range of consonants in consonant-vowel sequences, with the vowels a and i . The measures reliably distinguished between articulations with and without tongue dorsum excursion, and produced robust results on lingual coarticulation of the consonants. The reported data can be used as a starting point for collecting more typical data and for analyzing disordered speech. The measurements do not require head-to-transducer stabilization. Possible applications of the measures include studying tongue dorsum overuse in people with cleft palate, and typical and disordered development of coarticulation.