Speech Communication Session 5aSCb: Production and Perception II: The Speech Segment (Poster Session) 5aSCb47. A comparative cross-linguistic study of vocal tract shaping in sibilant fricatives in English, Serbian and Mandarin using real-time magnetic resonance imaging

An articulatory study of sibilant fricatives is described, with the goal of describing variability in lingual articulation across languages. Realtime Magnetic Resonance Imaging (rtMRI) data were collected from three speakers each of English and Mandarin and two speakers of Serbian and reconstructed at a rate of 22.4 frames per second. Parallel acoustic data were also collected and subsequently denoised. Subjects spoke the segments /s/ and /S/ in symmetrical vowel contexts (e.g. 'pa sap' for English and 'asa' for Mandarin). Articulation was analyzed using a semipolar grid overlaid on the image plane and midsagittal distance functions were obtained by measuring cross distances at ~0.5 cm intervals from the glottis to the lips. Analysis shows that place of articulation for /s/ is more anterior compared to /S/ across languages. Apical articulation is observed for /s/ across languages, while /S/ is produced laminally in English and apically in Serbian and Mandarin. Patterns of tongue shaping variability differ, as well, across languages. For instance, higher standard deviation is observed anterior to the place of articulation for /S/ in Mandarin, compared to Serbian and English. [Work supported by NIH]