Articulation and Coarticulation in the Lower Vocal Tract

This proposal is aimed at understanding the strategies that are used to control articulators during speech and at clarifying the relationships between phonological features and articulatory motions. This experimental project involves the collection and analysis of Magnetic Resonance Imaging (MRI) and acoustic speech data, combined with numerical modelling of articulatory motions. Movements of the tongue root and velum are very important in speech production. The velum position effectively defines nasal consonants; the advancement or retraction of the tongue root determines the volume of the pharynx, the largest cavity of the vocal tract. However, the back half of the vocal cavity has had relatively little attention. Access is difficult, and subjects do not tolerate many experimental techniques that work well for the front of the vocal cavity.