Dynamics of Consonant Production
We are using Real-time MRI to investigate how different consonants are
produced in different languages. Real-time MRI reveals how the tongue, lips,
velum
and glottis move, and how these organs are coordinated
when a speaker articulates a consonant in different vowel contexts. The demonstration videos provide
mid-sagittal views of two speakers producing
all of the consonants in the IPA chart.
Phonetics of Singing
We are using Real-time MRI to study different types of singing, including Western Classical Soprano and Human Beatboxing performance, to investigate:
- how human vocal organs are utilized in different performance styles.
- how this articulation resembles/differs from that of spoken speech.
- how percussive and linguistic gestures are coordinated.
- how we perceive different signals are musical or linguistic in nature.
More information about this work can be found in the paper:
Michael Proctor, Erik Bresch, Dani Byrd, Krishna Nayak, and Shrikanth Narayanan. Paralinguistic Mechanisms of Production in Human 'Beatboxing:' a Real-time Magnetic Resonance Imaging Study. J. Acoust. Soc. Am. 133(2). 2013. and the accompanying multimedia site.
The video The Diva and the MC -- singing research using Real-time MRI, shows some examples of the data. The Diva and the MC -- singing research using Real-time MRI:
Speech Errors
Speech errors ('slips of the tongue'), offer important insights into speech production and phonological organization. Speech errors are not random -- they typically resemble other speech events, and appear to be systematic in their occurrence and distribution.
Traditionally, speech error studies have relied on transcriptions, which are limited in several respects: they are subject to the perceptual biases of the experimenter, cannot detect gradient errors, and are restricted to phenomena with clear acoustic correlates.
We are using Real-time MRI to investigate the articulatory properties of speech errors. Anomalous motor activity, which is not always audible, can be detected in these data -- for example in articulatory intrusions and shifts in the coordination of different articulators -- which suggests that certain types of speech error may be better understood as being gestural in nature.