Due to its aerodynamic, articulatory, and acoustic complexities, the fricative /s/ is known to require high precision in its control, and to be highly resistant to coarticulation. This study documents in detail how jaw, tongue front, tongue back, lips, and the first spectral moment covary during the production of /s/, to establish how coarticulation affects this segment. Data were obtained from 24 speakers in the Wisconsin x-ray microbeam database producing /s/ in prevocalic and pre-obstruent sequences. Analysis of the data showed that certain aspects of jaw and tongue motion had specific kinematic trajectories, regardless of context, and the first spectral moment trajectory corresponded to these in some aspects. In particular contexts, variability due to jaw motion is compensated for by tongue-tip motion and bracing against the palate, to maintain an invariant articulatory–aerodynamic goal, constriction degree. The change in the first spectral moment, which rises to a peak at the midpoint of the fricative, primarily reflects the motion of the jaw. Implications of the results for theories of speech motor control and acoustic–articulatory relations are discussed.
REFERENCES
1.
Blacklock
, O.
(2004
). “Characteristics of variation in production of normal and disordered fricatives, using reduced-variance spectral methods
,” Ph.D. thesis, School of Electronics and Computer Science, University of Southampton
, Southampton, UK.2.
Catford
, J. C.
(1977
). Fundamental Problems in Phonetics
(Indiana University Press
, Bloomington, IN
), pp. 154
–156
.3.
Engwall
, O.
(2000
). “Dynamical aspects of coarticulation in Swedish fricatives—a combined EMA and EPG study
,” TMH-QPSR
41
, 49
–73
.4.
Flash
, T.
, and Hogan
, N.
(1985
). “The coordination of arm movements: An experimentally confirmed mathematical model
,” J. Neurosci.
5
, 1688
–1703
.5.
Forrest
, K.
, Weismer
, G.
, Milenkovic
, P.
, and Dougall
, R.
(1988
). “Statistical analysis of word initial voiceless obstruents: Preliminary data
,” J. Acoust. Soc. Am.
84
, 115
–123
.6.
Fowler
, C.
, and Saltzman
, E.
(1993
). “Coordination and coarticulation in speech production
,” Lang. Speech
36
, 171
–195
.7.
Guenther
, F.
, Hampson
, M.
, and Johnson
, D.
(1998
). “A theoretical investigation of reference frames for the planning of speech movements
,” Psychol. Rev.
105
, 611
–633
.8.
Hardcastle
, W.
(1976
). Physiology of Speech Production: An Introduction for Speech Scientists
(Academic Press
, London
), pp. 134
–137
.9.
Iskarous
, K.
, Shadle
, C.
, and Proctor
, M.
(2008
). “Evidence for the dynamic nature of fricative production: American English /s/
,” Proceedings of the International Seminar on Speech Production
, Strasbourg, France
, pp. 405
–408
.10.
Jesus
, L.
, and Shadle
, C.
(2002
). “A parametric study of the spectral characteristics of European Portuguese fricatives
,” J. Phonetics
30
, 437
–464
.11.
Jongman
, A.
, Wayland
, R.
, and Wong
, S.
(2000
). “Acoustic characteristics of American English fricatives
,” J. Acoust. Soc. Am.
108
, 1252
–1263
.12.
Laboissière
, R.
, Lametti
, D.
, and Ostry
, D. J.
(2009
). “Impedance control and its relation to precision in orofacial movement
,” J. Neurosci.
102
, 523
–531
.13.
Ladefoged
, P.
, and Maddieson
, I.
(1996
). The Sounds of the World’s Languages
(Blackwell Publishers
, Oxford
), pp. 137
–139
.14.
Maniwa
, K.
, Jongman
, A.
, and Wade
, T.
(2009
). “Acoustic characteristics of clearly spoken English fricatives
,” J. Acoust. Soc. Am.
125
, 3962
–3973
.15.
McGowan
, R.
(2004
). “Anterior tongue and jaw movement in sVd words
,” J. Acoust. Soc. Am.
115
, 2632
.16.
Mooshammer
, C.
, Hoole
, P.
, and Geumann
, A.
(2007
). “Jaw and order
,” Lang. Speech
50
, 145
–176
.17.
Munson
, B.
(2001
). “A method for studying variability in fricatives using dynamic measures of spectral mean
,” J. Acoust. Soc. Am.
110
, 1203
–1206
.18.
Perkell
, J.
, Guenther
, F.
, Lane
, H.
, Matthies
, M. L.
, Perrier
, P.
, Vick
, J.
, Wilhelms-Tricarico
, R.
, and Zandipour
, M.
(2000
). “A theory of speech motor control and supporting data from speakers with normal hearing and with profound hearing loss
,” J. Phonetics
28
, 233
–272
.19.
Pinheiro
, J. C.
, and Bates
, D. M.
(2000
). Mixed-Effects Models in S and S-PLUS
(Springer
, New York
), pp. 30
–31
.20.
Recasens
, D.
, and Espinosa
, A.
(2009
). “An articulatory investigation of lingual coarticulatory resistance and aggressiveness for consonants and vowels in Catalan
,” J. Acoust. Soc. Am.
125
, 2288
–2298
.21.
Recasens
, D.
, Pallares
, M.
, and Fontdevila
, J.
(1997
). “A model of lingual coarticulation based on articulatory constraints
,” J. Acoust. Soc. Am.
102
, 544
–561
.22.
Saltzman
, E.
, and Munhall
, K.
(1989
). “A dynamical approach to gestural patterning in speech production
,” Ecol. Psychol.
1
, 1615
–1623
.23.
Shadle
, C.
(1985
). “The acoustics of fricative consonants
,” Ph.D. thesis, Department of Electrical Engineering and Computer Science, Massachusetts Institute of Technology
, released as MIT-RLE Technical Report No. 506.24.
Shadle
, C.
, Iskarous
, K.
, and Proctor
, M.
(2006
). “Articulation of fricatives: Evidence from X-ray microbeam data
,” J. Acoust. Soc. Am.
119
, 3301
.25.
Shadle
, C.
, and Mair
, S.
(1996
). “Quantifying spectral characteristics of fricatives
,” in International Conference on Spoken Language Processing
, Philadelphia
, pp. 1521
–1524
.26.
Singer
, J. D.
, and Willett
, J. B.
(2003
). Applied Longitudinal Data Analysis: Modeling Change and Event Occurrence
(Oxford University Press
, New York
), pp. 45
–74
.27.
28.
Stone
, M.
, and Lundberg
, A.
(1996
). “Three-dimensional tongue surface shapes of English consonants and vowels
,” J. Acoust. Soc. Am.
96
, 3728
–3736
.29.
Tasko
, S.
, and Westbury
, J.
(2002
). “Defining and measuring speech movement events
,” J. Speech Lang. Hear. Res.
45
, 127
–142
.30.
Westbury
, J.
(1994
). X-ray Microbeam Speech Production Database User’s Handbook
(University of Wisconsin
, Madison, WI
), pp. 17
–27
.31.
Westbury
, J.
, Lindstrom
, M.
, and McClean
, M.
(2002
). “Tongues and lips without jaws: A comparison of methods for decoupling speech movements
,” J. Speech Lang. Hear. Res.
45
, 651
–662
.© 2011 Acoustical Society of America.
2011
Acoustical Society of America
You do not currently have access to this content.