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Unmasking the acoustic effects of vowel-to-vowel coarticulation: A statistical modeling approach.

ABSTRACT: Coarticulation is a source of acoustic variability for vowels, but how large is this effect relative to other sources of variance? We investigate acoustic effects of anticipatory V-to-V coarticulation relative to variation due to the following C and individual speaker. We examine F1 and F2 from V1 in 48 V1-C#V2 contexts produced by 10 speakers of American English. ANOVA reveals significant effects of both V2 and C on F1 and F2 measures of V1. The influence of V2 and C on acoustic variability relative to that of speaker and target vowel identity is evaluated using hierarchical linear regression. Speaker and target vowel account for roughly 80% of the total variance in F1 and F2, but when this variance is partialed out C and V2 account for another 18% (F1) and 63% (F2) of the remaining target vowel variability. Multinomial logistic regression (MLR) models are constructed to test the power of target vowel F1 and F2 for predicting C and V2 of the upcoming context. Prediction accuracy is 58% for C-Place, 76% for C-Voicing and 54% for V2, but only when variance due to other sources is factored out. MLR is discussed as a model of the parsing mechanism in speech perception.

SUBMITTER: Cole J

PROVIDER: S-EPMC3003261 | biostudies-literature | 2010 Apr

REPOSITORIES: biostudies-literature

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Unmasking the acoustic effects of vowel-to-vowel coarticulation: A statistical modeling approach.

Cole Jennifer J Linebaugh Gary G Munson Cheyenne C McMurray Bob B

Journal of phonetics 20100401 2

Coarticulation is a source of acoustic variability for vowels, but how large is this effect relative to other sources of variance? We investigate acoustic effects of anticipatory V-to-V coarticulation relative to variation due to the following C and individual speaker. We examine F1 and F2 from V1 in 48 V1-C#V2 contexts produced by 10 speakers of American English. ANOVA reveals significant effects of both V2 and C on F1 and F2 measures of V1. The influence of V2 and C on acoustic variability rel ...[more]

PMID: 21173864

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Project description:In the first years of life, children differ greatly from adults in the temporal organization of their speech gestures in fluent language production. However, dissent remains as to the maturational direction of such organization. The present study sheds new light on this process by tracking the development of anticipatory vowel-to-vowel coarticulation in a cross-sectional investigation of 62 German children (from 3.5 to 7 years of age) and 13 adults. It focuses on gestures of the tongue, a complex organ whose spatiotemporal control is indispensable for speech production. The goal of the study was threefold: 1) investigate whether children as well as adults initiate the articulation for a target vowel in advance of its acoustic onset, 2) test if the identity of the intervocalic consonant matters and finally, 3) describe age-related developments of these lingual coarticulatory patterns. To achieve this goal, ultrasound tongue imaging was used to record lingual movements and quantify changes in coarticulation degree as a function of consonantal context and age. Results from linear mixed effects models indicate that like adults, children initiate vowels' lingual gestures well ahead of their acoustic onset. Second, while the identity of the intervocalic consonant affects the degree of vocalic anticipation in adults, it does not in children at any age. Finally, the degree of vowel-to-vowel coarticulation is significantly higher in all cohorts of children than in adults. However, among children, a developmental decrease of vocalic coarticulation is only found for sequences including the alveolar stop /d/ which requires finer spatiotemporal coordination of the tongue's subparts compared to labial and velar stops. Altogether, results suggest greater gestural overlap in child than in adult speech and support the view of a non-uniform and protracted maturation of lingual coarticulation calling for thorough considerations of the articulatory intricacies from which subtle developmental differences may originate.

Project description:PurposeTo develop a new approach for interobserver variability analysis.Methods and materialsEight radiation oncologists specializing in breast cancer radiation therapy delineated a patient's left breast "from scratch" and from a template that was generated using deformable image registration. Three of the radiation oncologists had previously received training in Radiation Therapy Oncology Group consensus contouring for breast cancer atlas. The simultaneous truth and performance level estimation algorithm was applied to the 8 contours delineated "from scratch" to produce a group consensus contour. Individual Jaccard scores were fitted to a beta distribution model. We also applied this analysis to 2 or more patients, which were contoured by 9 breast radiation oncologists from 8 institutions.ResultsThe beta distribution model had a mean of 86.2%, standard deviation (SD) of ±5.9%, a skewness of -0.7, and excess kurtosis of 0.55, exemplifying broad interobserver variability. The 3 RTOG-trained physicians had higher agreement scores than average, indicating that their contours were close to the group consensus contour. One physician had high sensitivity but lower specificity than the others, which implies that this physician tended to contour a structure larger than those of the others. Two other physicians had low sensitivity but specificity similar to the others, which implies that they tended to contour a structure smaller than the others. With this information, they could adjust their contouring practice to be more consistent with others if desired. When contouring from the template, the beta distribution model had a mean of 92.3%, SD ± 3.4%, skewness of -0.79, and excess kurtosis of 0.83, which indicated a much better consistency among individual contours. Similar results were obtained for the analysis of 2 additional patients.ConclusionsThe proposed statistical approach was able to measure interobserver variability quantitatively and to identify individuals who tended to contour differently from the others. The information could be useful as feedback to improve contouring consistency.

Dataset Information

Unmasking the acoustic effects of vowel-to-vowel coarticulation: A statistical modeling approach.

Publications

Unmasking the acoustic effects of vowel-to-vowel coarticulation: A statistical modeling approach.

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