Ultrasound tongue imaging data of Italian and Polish speakers

PROJECT

Vowel duration and consonant voicing: A production study

COMPENDIUM

DOI 10.17605/OSF.IO/W92ME

URL https://osf.io/w92me/

PUBLICATION

An exploratory study of voicing-related differences in vowel duration as compensatory temporal adjustment in Italian and Polish

DOI 10.5334/gjgl.869

Abstract

Over a century of phonetic research has established the cross-linguistic existence of the so called “voicing effect”, by which vowels tend to be shorter when followed by voiceless stops and longer when the following stop is voiced. However, no agreement is found among scholars regarding the source of this effect, and several causal accounts have been advanced. A notable one is the compensatory temporal adjustment account, according to which the duration of the vowel is inversely correlated with the stop closure duration (voiceless stops having longer closure durations than voiced stops). The compensatory account has been criticised due to lack of empirical support and its vagueness regarding the temporal interval within which compensation is implemented. The results from an exploratory study of Italian and Polish suggest that the duration of the interval between two consecutive stop releases in CVCV words in these languages is not affected by the voicing of the second stop. The durational difference of the first vowel and the stop closure would then follow from differences in timing of the VC boundary within this interval. While other aspects, like production mechanisms related to laryngeal features effects and perceptual biases cannot be ruled out, the data discussed here are compatible with a production account based on compensatory mechanisms.

1 Description

The folder coretta2018/ultrasound/ contains files exported from Articulate Assistant Advanced with spline data from ultrasound tongue imaging of Italian and Polish speakers.

There are two files per speaker:

• The *-tongue-cart.tsv file has spline data taken at specific time points.

• The *-vowel-series.tsv file has spline data from within the duration of the target vowel segment.

2 Variables in *-tongue-cart.tsv

speaker

speaker’s ID

rec_date

date and time of recording

prompt

sentence stimulus

label

annotation label

TT_displacement_sm

tongue tip displacement position (smoothed) in mm

TT_velocity

tongue tip velocity

TT_velocity_abs

tongue tip absolute velocity

TD_displacement_sm

tongue dorsum displacement position (smoothed) in mm

TD_velocity

tongue dorsum velocity

TD_velocity_abs

tongue dorsum absolute velocity

TR_displacement_sm

tongue root displacement position (smoothed) in mm

TR_velocity

tongue root velocity

TR_velocity_abs

tongue root absolute velocity

The remaining columns are the X and Y coordinates of the spline along the 42 fan lines (X_1, Y_1, X_2, Y_2, …, X_42, Y_42)