NNA Corpus Video 3: Ultrasound Analysis

Author(s): Hannah Brennan, Bren Yaghmour, Domi Hannon, Jaxon Myers

Mentor(s): Vincent Chanethom, Linguistics; Harim Kwon, English; Giulia Masella Soldati, Haley A. todd, Graduate Assistants

Abstract

Ultrasound is a non-invasive method of looking inside the body to ascertain the tongue’s movements. Because we cannot see what is happening inside of a person’s mouth when they talk, studying speech is largely done by making judgements on what could be happening based on the acoustics and lip movements of the speaker. The Non-Native Articulatory Corpus will provide researchers all over the world access to speech ultrasound data, a commodity which is expensive and difficult to acquire. By creating an online database of audio and ultrasound recordings of native and non-native speakers of foreign languages, we will be able to compare and contrast the movements of the tongue when speakers attempt the same sounds. These comparisons can be used by linguists, speech therapists, and language learners to analyze and alter their own pronunciations. This database provides extensive data on a subject that is understudied due to the prevalence of anglocentrism in research and makes use of the diverse language population in and around George Mason University.

Video Transcript

The Non-Native Articulatory Corpus shares the audio and video data collected in our lab for
research analysis. If you haven’t already, check out our video introducing the NNA Corpus and
it’s website. Here, Domi and I will show you what we do with the data after we have collected it.
You have likely already seen some of these ultrasound images, so we want to go a little deeper
into what you have been seeing.
The ultrasound recordings were done using the software Articulate Assistant Advanced. We used
this same software to analyze the data as well. People will be able to take the audio or video
recordings of participants from the website, NNA.GMU.EDU, and use this or similar software to
look at the curve of the tongue. Here we see the tongue tip and tongue back and the movement
that occurs as the speaker produces the words ski, scoop, skate, scat, scope, scott, sky. Notice
how the height of the tongue changes during the vowels. The ability to track these movements
allows us to compare a native and non-native speaker’s articulation.
[Participant pronounces] ski, scoop, skate, scat, scope, scott, sky
NNA.GMU.EDU will house the raw ultrasound video and audio, but we will also be including
some examples of the data annotated with the tongue splines. To show you the differences that
can be analyzed using our corpus, we will show you one word read by two different French
speakers. The French word you see on the screen means “favorite” in English. First, here is a
native speaker pronouncing the word.
Now let’s look at the ultrasound images of some second language speakers. This is an
intermediate speaker of the language. Notice that the native speaker’s tongue sits higher and
more rounded in the mouth and the tongue effortlessly shifts from the front to the back of the
mouth for /R/, while the intermediate speaker’s tongue must remain lower to compensate for the
space between the /p/ at the front of the mouth and the guttural /R/ at the back.
This is a speaker with very little experience in the language. As you can see, this speaker does
not produce /R/ as a guttural sound at all, but instead produces it as the retroflex /r/ that exists in
English, probably because they are more unfamiliar with the sounds of the language.
Being able to track these differences will not only help the language learners, but it will also
provide some insight to the mental and physical challenges that come with acquiring a new
language.
The other half of our team has another video which shows the lab and the procedure for
recording these participants, so be sure to check that out if you haven’t already. This has been the
analysis of the audio and video data. If you think it would be fun to see your tongue as you
speak, our website and social media will have updates for when we start recording your second
language.

For more on this topic see:
NNA Corpus Video 1: Intro to Linguistic Corpus
NNA Corpus Video 2: Lab and Procedures

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