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This paper presents the results of an articulatory study of palatalized consonants in Polish, a language with a typologically rare concentration of two phonemic series of posterior sibilants, one inherently palatalized, and the other contextually (allophonically) palatalized. For both phonemic and allophonic palatalization in Polish, it was found that the most stable correlates of palatalization are the advancement of the tongue root and a combined effect of raising and fronting of the tongue body. The advancement of the tongue root can be interpreted as the driving force in palatalization, while the effect of tongue body fronting and raising can be seen as secondary, resulting from the movement of the tongue root and the characteristic of the tongue as a muscular hydrostat.

The purpose of this pilot study was to examine the effect of tongue color change due to food ingestion on tongue diagnosis by both Korean Medicine doctors and digital tongue diagnosis system. In order to obtain objective and quantitative data, we used digital camera to collect the data. Prior to our investigation, we conducted a brief survey of 26 Korean Medicine doctors and found out that tongue diagnosis is frequently used and food-stained tongue could be commonly observed in clinics. Depending on their color, viscosity, and amount of intake, various foods caused stains with different colors and thicknesses. Also, duration and amount of food stain on tongue were different from person to person. Since coffee-stained tongue was the most frequently observed one in clinics according to the survey, we used coffee to evaluate the effect of food-stained tongue on tongue diagnosis. Korean Medicine doctors tended to interpret coffee-stained tongue as having yellow tongue coat but their judgement on tongue body color did not differ in spite of the coffee stains. Meanwhile, tongue diagnosis system algorithm tended to judge coffee-stained tongue as having normal but yellowish tongue coat and reddish tongue body. Altogether, food color on tongue can influence tongue diagnosis outcomes. Further research is needed in order to develop more efficient tongue diagnosis algorithm and digital medical service system.

Objectives Evaluation of tongue colour is an important approach for assessment of human health in traditional East Asian medicine, which originated in ancient China. However, tongue colour analyses are unreliable due to poor quantification and reproducibility. Given these limitations, the utility of this technique as a clinical index has not been demonstrated. Here, we assessed whether tongue colour evaluations, as performed in Kampo (traditional Japanese) medicine, via an automated image acquisition system were associated with particular indices of patient health. Methods We obtained high colour reproduction tongue images from 816 Japanese subjects and applied a machine-learning analysis approach to the quantification of tongue body colour in them. Data on sex, age, systolic blood pressure, diastolic blood pressure, pulse rate (PR), body temperature, body mass index (BMI), past medical history (PMH), and blood examination results (haemoglobin, Hb; creatinine) were also collected. Results Tongue body colour was influenced by multiple clinical indices, per simple correlation analyses. In particular, sex, age, BMI, PR, and Hb were correlated with tongue body colour. No significant correlation with PMH was found. Conclusions Tongue body colour, as quantified with a machine learning approach, was found to be a clinical predictor of changes in several clinical indices, particularly those related to obesity and haemoglobin concentrations.

This paper reveals the concepts of taste in the Patani Malay ethnic group. Forty-five Patani Malays living in Pattani province, Yala province, and Narathiwat province participated in this study. The analysis uses the framework of componential analysis in ethnosemantics. The results show that there are ten basic taste terms in the Patani Malay dialect: /masɛ/ ‘sour’, /maseŋ/ ‘salty’, /manih/ ‘sweet’, /paheɁ/ ‘bitter’, /lɨcah/ ‘a little bit spicy and causing tongue pain’, /lɨta/ ‘unpleasant taste, sticking on the tongue and causing tongue numbness’, /khɨlaɁ/ ‘astringent’, /pɨdah/ ‘spicy’, /lɨmɔɁ/ ‘nutty’ and / tawa/ ‘bland’. All of them are distinguished by eight dimensions: taste buds, tongue side, tongue tip, acidity, tongue body, pain, tongue numbness, and nuttiness. Besides using each taste term individually to describe tastes of food, Patani Malays also use them repeatedly, combine each taste term together, and combine them with modifiers. From these ten basic taste terms, there are two taste terms that concern pain in the mouth and on the tongue. These are /lɨcah/ ‘a little bit spicy and causing tongue pain’ and /pɨdah/ ‘spicy’. This reflects the preference for spicy flavours in the Patani Malay ethnic group. It may be due to the influence of using spices and chili in cooking adopted from foreign countries since ancient times. It may also be due to the geographical characteristics of Pattani, Yala, and Narathiwat provinces, which are located along the coast. People, therefore, prefer eating spicy food to keep their body warm and prevent illness.

Purpose People who stutter (PWS) have more unstable speech motor systems than people who are typically fluent (PWTF). Here, we used real-time magnetic resonance imaging (MRI) of the vocal tract to assess variability and duration of movements of different articulators in PWS and PWTF during fluent speech production. Method The vocal tracts of 28 adults with moderate to severe stuttering and 20 PWTF were scanned using MRI while repeating simple and complex pseudowords. Midsagittal images of the vocal tract from lips to larynx were reconstructed at 33.3 frames per second. For each participant, we measured the variability and duration of movements across multiple repetitions of the pseudowords in three selected articulators: the lips, tongue body, and velum. Results PWS showed significantly greater speech movement variability than PWTF during fluent repetitions of pseudowords. The group difference was most evident for measurements of lip aperture using these stimuli, as reported previously, but here, we report that movements of the tongue body and velum were also affected during the same utterances. Variability was not affected by phonological complexity. Speech movement variability was unrelated to stuttering severity within the PWS group. PWS also showed longer speech movement durations relative to PWTF for fluent repetitions of multisyllabic pseudowords, and this group difference was even more evident as complexity increased. Conclusions Using real-time MRI of the vocal tract, we found that PWS produced more variable movements than PWTF even during fluent productions of simple pseudowords. PWS also took longer to produce multisyllabic words relative to PWTF, particularly when words were more complex. This indicates general, trait-level differences in the control of the articulators between PWS and PWTF. Supplemental Material https://doi.org/10.23641/asha.14782092

Background Traditional Chinese medicine (TCM) has been widely used in the treatment of coronavirus disease 2019 (COVID-19). Tongue features should be referred for diagnosis and treatment of diseases in TCM. Therefore, it is necessary to analyze the tongue features of the patients suffered from COVID-19. Methods COVID-19 Symptom Database (established by Evidence-based Medicine Center of Tianjin University of TCM) was searched for eligible tongue pictures. The tongue pictures were assessed by TCM experts to extract the data of tongue color, coating color, tongue body shape and coating proper feature. The relationship between tongue features and patient’s condition was analyzed. Results Patients diagnosed as mild and moderate COVID-19 commonly had light red tongue and white coating. Severe patients had purple tongue and yellow coating. The proportion of critical patients with tender tongue increased to 75%. Greasy coating was a significant characteristic of patients with COVID-19. The proportions of greasy coating were 53.3%, 73.3%, 83.6% and 87.5% in disease category of mild, moderate, severe and critical. In addition, the thick coating proportion increased from mild (24.9%) to critical (50.0%). Conclusions Tongue features have certain relationship with the category of COVID-19. Tongue features can serve as potential indicators for the evaluation of patient’s condition and prognosis. Further studies are needed to enhance the quantification of tongue features and develop standards.

Previous studies have shown a congruency effect between manual grasping and syllable articulation. For instance, a power grip is associated with syllables whose articulation involves the tongue body and/or large mouth aperture ([kɑ]) whereas a precision grip is associated with articulations that involve the tongue tip and/or small mouth aperture ([ti]). Previously, this effect has been observed in manual reaction times. The primary aim of the current study was to investigate whether this congruency effect also takes place in vocal responses and to investigate involvement of action selection processes in the effect. The congruency effect was found in vocal and manual responses regardless of whether or not the syllable or grip was known a priori, suggesting that the effect operates with minimal or absent action selection processes. In addition, the effect was observed in vocal responses even when the grip was only prepared but not performed, suggesting that merely planning a grip response primes the corresponding articulatory response. These results support the view that articulation and grasping are processed in a partially overlapping network.

Kalasha, an endangered Dardic language (Indo-Aryan), is described as having series of retroflex and retroflex-nasal vowels, each with five contrasting vowel qualities. This study provides the first articulatory description of these vowels using lingual ultrasound imaging, showing that the vowels described as retroflex are produced not with tongue tip retroflexion but with bunching of the tongue body. Relative to their non-rhotic counterparts, these rhotic vowels are produced with more retracted tongue root and tongue blade, and they exhibit tongue dorsum concavity, much like bunched rhotic vowels in other languages. The five-way quality contrast between rhotic vowels is achieved using lip rounding as well as differences in tongue dorsum height, backness, and tongue root retraction. The lingual differences are reduced in comparison to the non-rhotic vowels, as they are constrained by the articulatory gestures used to achieve rhoticity.

In the development of traditional Chinese medicine in China for five thousand years, the tongue clinic occupies a very important position. In Chinese medicine, it is an irreplaceable role in the diagnosis and treatment of Chinese medicine of important method. Tongue diagnosis as one of the most characteristic of Chinese medicine diagnosis has been from the previous subjective observation, relying on the experience to judge the era into the new era of tongue diagnosis objectification, quantification, and the introduction of computer digital image processing technology to more Accurate diagnosis. This article will mainly introduce the current in the Chinese and Western medicine on all aspects of the tongue diagnosis of the objective, micro, quantitative progress, the characteristics of tongue images and a variety of processing techniques, including tongue image automatic segmentation, and tongue fat and thin The Relationship and Modernization of Organ Pathology in Viscera. At the same time, a tongue-sized measurement method is introduced. Two-dimensional ultrasound imaging is used as a means of inspection to establish a set of ultrasonic tongue-sized measurement methods. The measured parameters include the two longitudinal planes of the tongue and the cross-section of the tongue. Out of the tongue size of the data, the overall analysis of the size of the tongue shape. This method combines some of the configuration line spacing, area, and circumference measurement functions to directly measure the data. Finally, through the accuracy test of the measurement method, it is proved that the measurement result of tongue two-dimensional ultrasound imaging is accurate. All the efforts of modernization are committed to the Chinese medicine tongue medicine to scientific can be quantified; Chinese medicine tongue diagnosis will also make a greater contribution to modern medicine.

Tongue body segmentation is essential for the computerized tongue diagnosis. Several segmentation methods have been developed and some evaluation methods have been used for test the segmentation. However, it is difficult to assess the non-contour parts on the results of segmentation by using the existing assessment methods. To deal with this problem, in this paper, we proposed a novel assessment method for tongue body segmentation based on the characteristics of tongue body contour, called AMGE. In AMGE, There are three steps. Firstly, since of the closed circle structure, the tongue contour is converted into polar coordinate. Secondly, based on the characteristics of tongue body contour, we propose tongue body contour energy which contains radial-based energy function and angle-based energy function. Based on this contour energy function, we can evaluate the tongue body segmentations. Finally, one single threshold is selected to detect the non-contour parts on contour which have high values of energy. Experiments show that the proposed assessment method is superior to the conventional area-based methods and boundary-based methods.

In an analytic-linguistic approach to teaching segmental pronunciation and articulatory setting, teachers and voice coaches give explicit instructions on tongue placement and movements. Instructors assume that learners can do exactly as instructed. This assumption was tested in research by Wilson and Horiguchi (2012, PSLLT), who showed that phonetically untrained participants were very poor at following explicit tongue movement instructions. In their study, both the magnitude and direction of movement of the tongue’s centre of gravity were calculated from 2D ultrasound images. However, by only measuring changes in the centre of gravity, it is possible that movements were found to be smaller than they really were, especially if participants focused on the front of the tongue rather than the whole tongue body. In this study, we reanalyzed the original data, this time focusing on the surface of the tongue, rather than the centre of gravity. We made tongue traces using EdgeTrak software (Li et al., 2005), and compared them using a Smoothing-Spline ANOVA method (Davidson, 2006). Results differed from the original study, showing that participants were more conscious of what the front of the tongue was doing rather than the whole tongue body. Implications for segmental pronunciation teaching will be discussed.In an analytic-linguistic approach to teaching segmental pronunciation and articulatory setting, teachers and voice coaches give explicit instructions on tongue placement and movements. Instructors assume that learners can do exactly as instructed. This assumption was tested in research by Wilson and Horiguchi (2012, PSLLT), who showed that phonetically untrained participants were very poor at following explicit tongue movement instructions. In their study, both the magnitude and direction of movement of the tongue’s centre of gravity were calculated from 2D ultrasound images. However, by only measuring changes in the centre of gravity, it is possible that movements were found to be smaller than they really were, especially if participants focused on the front of the tongue rather than the whole tongue body. In this study, we reanalyzed the original data, this time focusing on the surface of the tongue, rather than the centre of gravity. We made tongue traces using EdgeTrak software (Li et al., 2005), and...

Whispered speech is known to have different characteristics in acoustics and articulation compared to neutral speech. In this study, we compare the accuracy with which the articulation can be recovered from the acoustics of both types of speech, individually. Acoustic-to-articulatory inversion (AAI) is performed with twelve articulatory features using the deep neural network (DNN) with data obtained from four subjects. We consider AAI in matched and mis-matched train-test conditions, where the speech types in training and test are identical and different respectively. Experiments in matched condition reveal that the AAI performance for whispered speech drops significantly compared to that for neutral speech, only for jaw, tongue tip and tongue body, consistently, for all four subjects. This indicates that the whispered speech encodes information about the rest of the articulators to a degree similar to that of the neutral speech. Experiments in the mis-matched condition show a consistent drop in the AAI performance compared to the matched condition. This drop in performance from matched to mis-matched condition is found be the highest for upper lip which indicates that the upper lip movement could be encoded differently in whispered speech compared to that in neutral speech.

We investigated the hypothesis that Yin-deficient patients have a reddened tongue with less coating. We screened 189 participants aged 20 to 49 years, complaining of headache. To classify patients in terms of Yin deficiency, we used two self-reporting Yin-deficiency questionnaires (Yin-Deficiency Questionnaire and Yin-Deficiency Scale) and diagnosis by a doctor. Based on the tests, a total of 33 subjects were assigned to a Yin-deficient group and 33 subjects were assigned to a nondeficient control group. Tongue images were acquired using a computerized tongue diagnostic system, for evaluating tongue indices. The tongue coating percentage and tongue redness were calculated as the mean a⁎ value of both the whole tongue area (WT a⁎) and the tongue body area (TB a⁎). The tongue coating percentage of the Yin-deficient group (34.79 ± 10.76) was lower than that of the nondeficient group (44.13 ± 14.08). The WT a⁎ value of the Yin-deficient group (19.39 ± 1.52) was significantly higher than that of the nondeficient group (18.21 ± 2.06). However, the difference in the TB a⁎ value between the two groups was not significant. In conclusion, we verified that Yin-deficient patients had less tongue coating and tended to have a more reddish tongue than nondeficient patients.

This chapter presents a region merging-based automatic tongue segmentation method. First, gradient vector flow is modified as a scalar diffusion equation to diffuse the tongue image while preserving the edge structures of the tongue body. Then the diffused tongue image is segmented into many small regions by using the watershed algorithm. Third, maximal similarity-based region merging is used to extract the tongue body area under the control of the tongue marker. Finally, the snake algorithm is used to refine the region merging result by setting the extracted tongue contour as the initial curve. The proposed method was qualitatively tested on 200 images by Traditional Chinese Medicine practitioners and quantitatively tested on 50 tongue images using the receiver operating characteristic analysis. Compared with the previous active contour model-based bi-elliptical deformable contour algorithm, the proposed method greatly enhances the segmentation performance, and it can reliably extract the tongue body from different types of tongue images.

This study examined the contributions of the tongue tip (TT), tongue body (TB), and tongue lateral (TL) sensors in the electromagnetic articulography (EMA) measurement of American English alveolar consonants. Thirteen adults produced /ɹ/, /l/, /z/, and /d/ in /ɑCɑ/ syllables while being recorded with an EMA system. According to statistical analysis of sensor movement and the results of a machine classification experiment, the TT sensor contributed most to consonant differences, followed by TB. The TL sensor played a complementary role, particularly for distinguishing /z/.

In tongue diagnosis, colour information of tongue body has kept valuable information regarding the state of disease and its correlation with the internal organs. Qualitatively, practitioners may have difficulty in their judgement due to the instable lighting condition and naked eye’s ability to capture the exact colour distribution on the tongue especially the tongue with multicolour substance. To overcome this ambiguity, this paper presents a two-stage tongue’s multicolour classification based on a support vector machine (SVM) whose support vectors are reduced by our proposed k-means clustering identifiers and red colour range for precise tongue colour diagnosis. In the first stage, k-means clustering is used to cluster a tongue image into four clusters of image background (black), deep red region, red/light red region, and transitional region. In the second-stage classification, red/light red tongue images are further classified into red tongue or light red tongue based on the red colour range derived in our work. Overall, true rate classification accuracy of the proposed two-stage classification to diagnose red, light red, and deep red tongue colours is 94%. The number of support vectors in SVM is improved by 41.2%, and the execution time for one image is recorded as 48 seconds.

It has recently been reported in the synesthesia literature that graphemes sharing the same phonetic feature tend to induce similar synesthetic colors. In the present study, we investigated whether phonetic properties are associated with colors in a specific manner among the general population, even when other visual and linguistic features of graphemes are removed. To test this hypothesis, we presented vowel sounds synthesized by systematically manipulating the position of the tongue body’s center. Participants were asked to choose a color after hearing each sound. Results from the main experiment showed that lightness and chromaticity of matched colors exhibited systematic variations along the two axes of the position of the tongue body’s center. Some non-random associations between vowel sounds and colors remained effective with pitch and intensity of the sounds equalized in the control experiment, which suggests that other acoustic factors such as inherent pitch of vowels cannot solely account for the current results. Taken together, these results imply that the association between phonetic features and colors is not random, and this synesthesia-like association is shared by people in the general population.

The Tongue Drive System (TDS) is a new wearable assistive technology (AT), developed to translate voluntary tongue movements to user-defined computer commands by tracking the position of a titanium-encased magnetic tracer (Ti-Mag) implanted into the tongue. TDS application, however, is constrained by limited information on biological consequence and safety of device implantation into the tongue body. Here we implant a stainless-steel pellet in the rat tongue and assay pellet migration, tongue lick function, and tongue histology to test the safety and biocompatibility of unanchored tongue implants.Water consumption, weight and lick behavior were measured before and for24days after implantation of a stainless-steel spherical pellet (0.5mm) into the anterior tongue body of twelve adult male rats. X-rays were obtained weekly to assess pellet migration. Pellet location and tissue reaction to implantation were determined by post-mortem dissection and histology of the anterior tongue.By dissection pellets were distributed across the transverse plane of the tongue. Measures of water consumption, weight, and lick behavior were unchanged by implantation except for a decrease in consumption immediately post-implantation in some animals. By X-ray, there was no migration of the implant, a finding supported by pellet encapsulation demonstrated histologically. Measures of lick behavior were minimally impacted by implantation.A smooth spherical stainless-steel implant in the anterior tongue of the rat does not migrate, is encapsulated and does not substantially impact lick behavior. These findings support the implantation of small tracers in the anterior tongue in humans for operating wearable assistive technologies.

To develop differential criteria on the tongue coating thickness (TCT), and especially propose the standard for judgment on thin and thick coating in tongue diagnosis.Sixty oriental medical doctors evaluated the TCT (none, thin, and thick coating) in 50 realistic tongue photographs revealing from tip-to-root. The photographs were obtained with a digital tongue imaging system (DTIS) which measured the percentages of tongue coating on the tongue surface. We calculated the match rate which is the ratio in which the assessor's judgment is consistent with the decision standard on the tongue coating, and then 24 assessors (≥80% match rate) were selected to improve the reliability of the decision. The agreement level among 24 assessors was examined to assess the inter-rater reliability. The correlation between TCT judgments and DTIS-measured values was examined to ascertain the reliability of DTIS measurements. Finally, the assumption probability for the analysis of quantified characteristics of the tongue coating was calculated with a proportional odds model.The inter-rater reliability was assessed as moderate (κ=0.56) among 24 assessors, the level of correlation between TCT judgments and DTIS measurements in 24 assessors was relatively high (0.76, p0.01). As the analysis of the proportional odds model, 29.06% was a cut-off point to separate no coating and thin coating, 63.51% was a cut-off point to separate thin and thick coating.The differential criteria for TCT in tongue diagnosis were suggested, and particularly thick coating is defined as one that tongue coating which tongue body is invisible, occupy approximately more than two third areas on the tongue surface.

In this paper, first detect the edge of the tongue, to obtain the edge of tongue body coordinates. Then split the tongue using a variety of curve fitting function to analysis plumpness and slenderness of tongue, and compare the accuracy of different curve fitting. Finally, classify the fat tongue and thin tongue by using the neural network.

This study shows that the retraction of the tongue tip contributes to the raising of the tongue body in the articulation of high vowels /i/ and /u/ by using qualitative simulations of tongue deformation by using a biomechanical 3D tongue model of Artisynth (Lloyd et al. 2012) and the analysis of tongue configuration in X-ray microbeam data (Westbury 1994). The simulations qualitatively replicated the tongue shapes at the temporal mid-point of /i/ and /u/ in rtMRI data by manipulating the activation values of tongue muscles in Artisynth. The results show that the tongue tip retraction helps to raise the tongue body higher in both /i/ and /u/. In the simulations of /i/, the tongue tip retraction raises the tongue body even without moving the tongue body. The results of x-ray microbeam analysis confirm those findings of simulations. The mixed linear regression model of tongue configurations in the tasks of sentence and paragraph production shows that more tongue tip retraction (a shorter horizontal distance between two anterior tongue pellets) significantly correlates with a higher position of the tongue body (higher one between two posterior tongue pellets) in both /i/ and /u/ and the correlation is stronger in /i/ than in /u/.This study shows that the retraction of the tongue tip contributes to the raising of the tongue body in the articulation of high vowels /i/ and /u/ by using qualitative simulations of tongue deformation by using a biomechanical 3D tongue model of Artisynth (Lloyd et al. 2012) and the analysis of tongue configuration in X-ray microbeam data (Westbury 1994). The simulations qualitatively replicated the tongue shapes at the temporal mid-point of /i/ and /u/ in rtMRI data by manipulating the activation values of tongue muscles in Artisynth. The results show that the tongue tip retraction helps to raise the tongue body higher in both /i/ and /u/. In the simulations of /i/, the tongue tip retraction raises the tongue body even without moving the tongue body. The results of x-ray microbeam analysis confirm those findings of simulations. The mixed linear regression model of tongue configurations in the tasks of sentence and paragraph production shows that more tongue tip retraction (a shorter horizontal distance ...

Traditional Chinese Medicine diagnoses a wide range of health conditions by examining morphology features of the tongue, such as fat, thin and normal. This paper presents an approach of classification for recognizing and analyzing tongue morphology based on geometric features and tongue-mouth relation feature. The geometric features are defined using various measurements of width and length of the tongue body, and ratio between them. In addition, an innovative and important feature is proposed based on the relationship between the width of the tongue body and the width of the oral cavity, named as tongue-mouth relation feature. All these features are used to train a SVM classifier. Experimental results show that the tongue-mouth relation feature is helpful to improve the recognition accuracy for tongue morphology, and the proposed method, tested on a total of 200 tongue samples, achieved an accuracy of more than 92%.

OBJETIVO: analisar, do ponto de vista perceptivo-auditivo, a qualidade vocal de um grupo de falantes adultos da cidade de João Pessoa e correlacioná-la às medidas acústicas de freqüência dos formantes (F1, F2 e F3). MÉTODOS: o grupo estudado foi composto por 20 falantes, 10 do gênero masculino e 10 do feminino, na faixa etária compreendida entre 21 e 27 anos, todos nascidos e criados na cidade de João Pessoa. Foram coletadas amostras de fala (três repetições de uma sentença-veículo, dois textos e trechos de fala espontânea), na freqüência de amostragem de 11025 Hz. As gravações foram analisadas do ponto de vista perceptivo-auditivo (ajustes da qualidade vocal) com o uso do roteiro VPAS (Voice Profile Analysis Scheme) e acústico (medidas das freqüências de F1, F2 e F3 da vogal [a] inserida nas amostras). Os dados foram submetidos à análise estatística (análise de componentes principais e composição de clusters para o VPAS e o teste T de Student para as medidas de F1, F2 e F3). RESULTADOS: os ajustes de qualidade vocal predominantes nos falantes do gênero masculino foram: laringe baixa, corpo de língua retraído e voz crepitante. Nos falantes do gênero feminino predominaram ajustes de mandíbula aberta, corpo de língua retraído, corpo de língua abaixado e voz soprosa. As medidas de F1, F2 e F3 mostraram diferenças estatisticamente significantes em ambos os gêneros em relação a falantes de outras regiões do país, com respectivos valores para os falantes masculinos em p= 0,001; p= 0; p= 0,003 e para os falantes femininos em p= 0,002; p= 0,001; p= 0. CONCLUSÃO: foram encontradas particularidades na qualidade vocal e na estrutura formântica das vogais dos falantes de João Pessoa e identificadas correlações entre ajustes da qualidade vocal no plano perceptivo-auditivo e aspectos de curto termo no plano acústico.

The experimental research and heat transfer calculation of dog's tongue was processed on the basis of Traditional Chinese Medicine (TCM). Firstly, the blood perfusion rate of dog tongue was measured by the method of invasive. Secondly, the two-dimensional temperature fields of specific cross-section of tongue were calculated by the finite element method. Lastly, some conclusions were drawn, that inside the tongue body the blood perfusion change can make blood vessel to expand or constrict, and affect surface temperature field of tongue, on the other hand, the tongue cross-section temperature distribution is chiefly affected by the artery, blood vessel area and location. The above researches were carried out in order to seek the major factor that affects the tongue surface temperature distribution, and try to explain the relationship between tongue temperature and “tongue color”, which is a very important concept in Tongue Inspection of TCM, and if tongue surface temperature distribution can reflect the state of “tongue color” indirectly, these calculation results can help to analyze heat transfer characteristic of organism. In addition, the research method can be used to calculate the two-dimensional temperature field in various blood perfusion rate and multi-blood vessels affection.

Phonological theory distinguishes nasal and oral vowel counterparts by velopharyngeal port opening, neglecting other phonetic differences between phonemic and coarticulatory nasalization. Recent articulatory work provides evidence of oropharyngeal distinctions, in addition to velic lowering. This study (12 Brazilian Portuguese speakers) uses real-time MRI to investigate oropharyngeal differences between oral, phonemically nasal, and phonetically nasalized vowels /a, i, u/. Tissue boundaries in midsagittal vocal tract images were automatically detected to reveal each vowel repetition’s aperture function. Principal Components Analysis determined vocal tract regions responsible for the greatest variance in the data. Time-dynamic analyses of vocal tract area in these regions used smoothing spline ANOVA. Results show the tongue body and/or hyperpharynx as the most important articulators. For /a/, nasal vowels demonstrate wider hyperpharyngeal and narrower tongue body regions compared to oral vowels. For /u/, o...

In this paper, the tongue tip was modeled based on the articulatory data from MRI images in Standard Chinese. First, the MRI articulatory database of Standard Chinese, including 9 vowels and 75 consonant variants, were established. Second, Principle Component Analysis (PCA) was performed on the tongue shape to find articulatory factors, and the result showed that it would be more precise and concise when the tongue was divided as the tongue tip and tongue body and modeled separately. Finally, according to this result, the tongue tip was modeled by two articulatory parameters: Tongue Tip Protrude and Tongue Tip Raise, which represents the protruding/advancing and raising/retroflexing movements of the tongue tip.

International audience; The purpose of this paper is to illustrate the influence of the choice of the finite element technology on the occurrence of locking and hourglass instabilities. We chose to focus on the case study of the activation of the posterior genio-glossus (GGp) that is a lingual muscle located at the root of the tongue and inserts in the front to the mandible. The activation of this muscle compresses the tongue in the lower part and generates a forward and upward movement of the tongue body, because of the incompressibility of tongue tissues (for example during the production of the phonemes /i/ or /s/).

Introduction. According to traditional East Asian medicine (TEAM) theory, the tongue represents conditions of qi and blood. In the present study, the relationship between the tongue and the qi and blood in conditions with no apparent disease was investigated.Methods. A total of 454 elderly people with no apparent disease were recruited. Two Korean oriental medicine doctors classified subjects into a normal group (n = 402) and a sleep disorder group (n = 52). Three to five weeks after the experiment, 153 subjects were rerecruited for a second experiment. Two-dimensional color histograms, whose seven variables represent the color distribution in Commission Internationale de l'Éclairage 1976 (L*,a*,b*) color space, were produced from tongue images.Results. The color of the tongue body in the sleep disorder group appeared paler than that in the normal group, and the tongue coating in the normal group was less widely distributed compared with that in the sleep disorder group. The differences in tongue color between the normal at first experiment and sleep disorder at second experiment conditions were similar to the differences between the normal and the sleep disorder groups.Conclusions. The tongue states in the sleep disorder group indicate a qi and blood deficiency according to TEAM theory.

BACKGROUND The main trunk of the hypoglossal nerve enters the tongue body anterior to the hypoglossal muscle and runs in a medial direction. RESULTS Close to the lingual septum, the nerve changes its direction to a superior path and in a second change to an anterior path. The terminal branches disperse in the apical part of the tongue. To avoid injury of the hypoglossal nerve during surgical procedures within the body of the tongue, two fingerbreadth areas should be preserved. The first area lies in a vertical direction, from the entry of the nerve up to the longitudinal superior and inferior muscles. The second area extends from here in an anterior direction up to the lingual apex.

Tongue diagnosis is widely used in Traditional Chinese Medicine (TCM). A tooth-marked tongue is an important objective index of the diagnosis of qi (yang) deficiency syndrome. In view of the existing problems of the method based on the tongue edge to determine the tooth-marked, this paper studies the improved method. Firstly it judges whether the top of tongue body has recessed area and then adopts the Graham algorithm to construct the convex hull of tongue to get accurate locating of tooth-marked. Secondly it chooses the optimal threshold of tooth-marked area pixel. The experiment results demonstrate the efficiency of the improved method.

Previous studies have suggested two different hypotheses concerning the articulation of stress contrasts in English. Examination of low vowels surrounded by labial consonants generally shows lower jaw in accented as opposed to unaccented syllables, a result originally interpreted as a lower and hence louder vowel [Edwards et al., J. Acoust. Soc. Am. 89, 369–382 (1991)]. On the other hand, a study of nonlow back vowels in alveolar contexts showed higher and backer tongue body in accented syllables, suggesting a more peripheral vowel [de Jong, J. Acoust. Soc. Am. 97, 491–504 (1995)]. This paper reexamines the two hypotheses by looking at both jaw and tongue for both phonemically low and high vowels. Five speakers of Australian English read 20 tokens of two short discourses which placed the name ‘‘Babber’’ or ‘‘Beaber’’ twice each in accented and deaccented positions. Jaw and tongue positions were recorded simultaneously using a magnetometer. On average, the jaw was lower in all accented syllables, although ...

Results from physiological modeling of the behavior of the tongue are used to motivate hypotheses about articulatory contributions to the definition of targets for the point vowels. Quantal (non-linear) relations between articulation and vowel formant frequencies predict acoustic stability over some range of variation in constrictionlocationfor /a/, /i/, and /u/ (Stevens, 1972; 1989; Badin, Perrier, Bo e & Abry, 1990), but not for constrictiondegree.In agreement with this prediction, data are reviewed that show more precise positioning of the tongue body in a dorsal-ventral direction than in a direction parallel to the vocal-tract midline. It is hypothesized that for the vowels /i/ and /a/, which are each produced with one narrow constriction, overall acoustic stability is achieved by virtue of a quantal acoustically-based relation between constrictionlocationand vowel formants, in combination with a physiologically-based, quantal relation between motor commands and thedegreeof constriction (a mechanical “saturation effect ” —Fujimura & Kakita, 1979). For /u/, with two narrow constrictions, there is a similar quantal acoustic relation between the tongue-body constriction location and the vowel formants. The tongue-body constriction produced by contraction of the styloglossus muscle is in the acoustically-stable constriction location. There may not be a non-linear mechanism to help stabilizedegreeof constriction for /u/, but that lack might be compensated for by a trading relation between the acoustic effects of lip rounding and tongue-body raising. To exploit this trading relation, speakers would learn a low-level “motor equivalence control strategy ”, which they employ to help constrain acoustic variability.

Acoustic and electropalatographic data are presented involving palatal and alveolar contact coarticulation and alveolar-palatal contact correlations for Catalan velarized /l/ (5 speakers) and German non-velarized /l/ (4 speakers) in different vowel environments. Coarticulatory effects and significant alveolar-palatal correlations for German exceed those for Catalan which is consistent with the tongue body being more constrained for the velarized than the non-velarized realization. In comparison to non-velarized /l/, active predorsum lowering for velarized /l/ largely prevents dorsopalatal coarticulation with /i/ and tongue front –tongue dorsum coupling effects from occurring. Vowel-dependent variations in tongue dorsum position result in closure fronting differences for speakers of both languages which suggests that they use coordination mechanisms between the tongue tip and the tongue dorsum; however, not all speakers change closure location across vowel contexts.

C-V coarticulation in monosyllabic words containing initial clicks and /i:/ vowels is investigated in Mangetti Dune !Xung with 114 fps lingual ultrasound and acoustic data collected using the CHAUSA method (Miller and Finch 2011). The 114 fps rate yields an image of the tongue every 9 ms (+/-4.5 ms). Vowels following clicks have three lingual gestures involving the tongue tip/blade (TT), tongue body (TB) and tongue root (TR). TT and TB constrictions carried over from the clicks merge into a single vowel constriction at consonant specific rates. The second formant (F2) distinguishes each word type through the vowel midpoint. In regression analyses, TBCL and TRCL best predict F2 for alveolar click initial words, while TTCL best predicts F2 for dental / palatal click initial words. The more open constriction is acoustically inert. In the palatal click initial word, both constrictions are equally close for some speakers, and the gestures undergo blending (Browman and Goldstein 1990). I argue that these patter...

Magnetic resonance images of the vocal tract during sustained production of the fricatives /s, sh, f, θ, z, yog, v, edh/ by four subjects are analyzed. Measurements of vocal‐tract lengths and area functions, and morphological analyses of the vocal tract and tongue shapes for these sounds are presented. Interspeaker differences in area functions are found to be greater in the pharyngeal cavity than in the buccal cavity with the nonstrident fricatives exhibiting greater differences than the strident ones. The anterior tongue body of the alveolar stridents exhibit concave cross‐sectional shapes while that of the postalveolars show a relatively raised tongue body with flat or slightly convex cross‐sectional shapes. The concave tongue shapes of the alveolars result in a more abrupt area function behind the constriction when compared to that of the postalveolars. Laminality or apicality of articulation is found to be speaker dependent. Moreover, a greater degree of anterior medial grooving and lateral lingua‐pa...

To improve the skill of speaking a second language (L2), one good way may be to be aware of the underlying tongue position for a language. We focused on such underlying position differences between English and French, particularly when pausing for a short time between speaking; something called inter-speech posture (ISP). In past research, Wilson and Gick investigated ISP between English and French spoken by bilinguals. In that research, bilinguals had distinct articulatory settings for each language, mostly in the lips. However, their tongue data was for only 4 points of articulatory settings: distance from the ultrasound probe to tongue root, tongue dorsum, tongue body, and tongue tip, but not overall shape. Furthermore, to measure tongue tip position, past research relied on the alveolar ridge, which is unclear to see: possibly making the results inaccurate for tongue tip. In this study, we analyzed the whole shape of the tongue and made models of them using SS-ANOVA in R so that we could compare the d...

Upper Sorbian has been influenced tremendously by German, causing it to adopting the uvular rhotic. The current study examines the uvular rhotic and its palatalized counterpart in three vocalic environments (word initial, intervocalic, and word final) with the vowels /a, e, o, i/ using ultrasound. The preliminary results indicate a striking difference between the two phonemes. The plain uvular rhotic was characterized by a retracted and raised tongue dorsum, accompanied by a slightly retroflexed tongue tip. The retroflexed tongue tip is surprising for a uvular rhotic. It could be related to requirements for rhotic production or a remnant of the alveolar rhotic Upper Sorbian had historically. The environments with /i/ were especially striking: the uvular rhotic was palatalized intervocalically; the tongue body was raised near the palatal region, while the dorsum retracted strongly. In other word positions, the rhotic caused a lowering and retraction of /i/. The palatalized rhotic had a raised tongue body, ...

The morpho-functional and topographical features of the lingual papillae situated on the dorsal surface of the bovine tongue, were studied utilizing LM and SEM techniques. In the bovine species, the functional differentiation of the lingual papillae in their gustatory and mechanical modes, seems to be related to the position of the papillae rather than to their morphological features. The gustatory function predominates over the mechanical one on the caudal tract of the tongue body (lateral to the lingual torus and associated with circumvallate papillae). The gustatory function also involves the conical papillae situated on the caudal tract of the tongue body. This gustatory function is aided by additional anatomical structures: 1. The grooves situated on the rostro-lateral side of the conical papillae; 2. The microcraters located on the top of the fungiform papillae; and 3. The furrows of the circumvallatae papillae vallum. The contact between saliva soluble food particles and taste buds is aided and made more efficient by these structures. Furthermore, a large variety of conical papillae were observed, whereas no filiform papillae were noted.

Troughs, which are a discontinuity in anticipatory coarticulation (Perkell 1968), have been shown to occur in the tongue body in /ipi/ and lips in /usu/. An electromagnetic articulometer (EMA) study of a single subject reported previously showed that intraoral pressure during the consonant could not be solely responsible for the downwards tongue body movement observed during the labial consonants (/p, b, m, f, v/); results supported the hypothesis of a secondary tongue gesture during the consonant. Lip troughs during /s/ in rounded contexts were more ambiguous, possibly because of inconsistencies in corpus design. Six new subjects have been recorded using a WAVE EMA system and a revised corpus. Tongue trough magnitudes decreased in the order /f, v/ > /p, b/ > /m/, serving to disprove the aerodynamic hypothesis; they were deeper for long than short consonants (e.g., [iffi] > [ifi]), and converged to the same point in asymmetric vowel contexts. The same type of convergence during the consonant was observed ...

The production of consonants of the same place but different manner of articulation can involve certain adjustments in the posture of the tongue shape. This can be due to requirements for specific gestures (e.g., lowering the tongue sides for laterals) or constraints on coordination of different gestures (e.g., the tongue-palate constriction and the velum lowering for nasals). This study used ultrasound imaging to examine sagittal tongue shape differences in the production of Kannada (Dravidian) laterals, nasals, and stops of two places of articulation—alveolar/dental and retroflex. Words with these consonants (as geminates) were produced multiple times by five female and five male native speakers of Kannada. The analysis of tongue shapes revealed a lower tongue body/blade for laterals than stops, but only in retroflexes. The opposite was observed for /l/ vs. /t/, likely reflecting the alveolar vs. dental constriction differences. The nasals were produced with a significantly more advanced tongue body tha...

Because tongue image segmentation is an important procedure in the tongue characterization, its accuracy affects the following automatic process directly. In this paper, we propose a new tongue segmentation approach based on the combination a feature of tongue shape and the Snakes Correction model. We firstly get a rough tongue contour through using the features of tongue image in HIS color model, then correct a preliminary tongue contour with the feature of tongue shape, and apply this result to the Snake model for final result. The experimental results indicate that the approach is efficiently segmented tongue image.

Objective: Investigate the efficacy of coblation-channeling for the tongue (CCT) in treatment of tongue hypertrophy in OSAHS.Method: CCT was performed on 30 patients with OSAHS with tongue Friedman III or IV. Tongues were channeled perpendicularly to tongue base with laterally to tongue body from 10mm before FC and 25 mm from apex using Coblator II Wand Reflex55.Results: MRI was done at 12 month follow-up and showed the retrolingual airway space had widened significantly without severe complications. Tongue base were decreased from Friedman III or IV to I or II.Conclusion: The results showed that CCT was a safe, minimally invasive, effective and repeatable option for hypertrophy tongue, although long term observations need to be done.

We studied the arteries of the tongue of Sus scrofa domestica (Linnaeus, 1758) from 20 animals whose tongues were slaughtered while fresh and kept cooled (4oC) for transportation. The blood vessels of 15 animals were flowed with water (37oC), injected with stained latex, fixated with phormaldeid and dissected with magnifying glass. We injected 5 tongues with air and acetone PA; later, we injected again with air and at last with vinyl stained acetate. The material was put in water for 24 h and, after this, submerged in sulfuric acid 30% for two weeks to reveal the arterial system mold. The arteries provided dorsal, ventral and collateral branches in the following way: dorsal branches at the tongue root - three branches (50%), four branches (46.6%), five branches (3.4%); arrangements of the following dorsal and ventral branches at the tongue body - one ventral and two dorsal (46.6%), one ventral and three dorsal (23.3%), one ventral and one dorsal (23.3%), one ventral and four dorsal (3.4%) and one ventral branch (3.4%). At the lingual apex, the artery was parallel between antimers, made a medial curve, and reached the counter-lateral artery, establishing anastomoses by inosculation, forming arterial islands from which radial branches to the tip of the tongue were originated. KEYWORDS: lingual arteries; pigs; Sus scrofa domestica; swine; tongue.

This paper examined the articulatory properties of high vowels [i], [y], and [u] in Mandarin produced by four Taiwanese Mandarin native speakers and four English-speaking Chinese learners (L2 learners) with an Electromagnetic Articulagroph AG500. The articulatory positions of the tongue top (TT), the tongue body (TB), the tongue dorsal (TD), and the lips were investigated. The TT, TB, and TD of [y] produced by the L2 learner were further back than that by the native. In addition, the TD of [y] by the L2 learners was higher than the native. Further comparison found that the tongue positions of [y] was similar to [u] in L2 production. Regarding to the lip positions, the [y] and [u] were more protruded that [i] in the native production, while there is no difference among these three vowels in the L2 production. The findings suggested that most of the L2 learner were not aware that the lingual target [y] should be very similar to [i] but the lip articulators of [y] are more protruded than [i]. Some L2 learner...

Tongue diagnosis tops the four diagnoses and hence is crucial to the inspection diagnosis in Chinese Medicine. Clinically, doctors mostly rely on their own knowledge and experience when determining major lesions of a patient by observing the coloration, overall modalities, and volume of sputum of different parts of the tongue. Different doctors may come to drastically different judgments on the same tongue presentation with little overlap. Therefore, it is important to develop scientific methods that can help doctors diagnose based on standardized differentiation procedures and render reliable diagnoses in order to enhance the clinical application value of Chinese Medicine. The computerized automatic capture of characteristics shown on the images of the surface and the back of the tongue comprises breakup of the tongue image and capture of the tongue characteristics. And that, tongue characteristics include the shape, fur, body, and fluid. Sublingual collateral vessels are used to examine traits of veins on the back of the tongue and detect the length, width, number of branches, solidness, and color. By far, 29 images of the surface of the tongue and 69 images of the back of the tongue have been collected.

The aim of this report is to establish a tongue inspection method based on OCT imaging for quantifying the tongue properties in traditional Chinese medical diagnosis. The measurement was performed in the model of rats suffering with Spleen-Stomach Dampness-Heat Syndrome using OCT equipment, OCT image and histology estimates of the glossal layer of microstructure were obtained, and the accurate thickness and moisture degree of the tongue coating were analyzed. These OCT image showed that tongue every layer matched the histology estimates of the glossal microstructure, and compared with normal control group the thickness of tongue coating increased in rats suffering with Spleen-Stomach Dampness-Heat Syndrome than normal control rats ( P

Inspection of tongue is an age-old technique used by Trad itional Chinese Medicine (TCM) practitioners to determine a patient’s health status. Because tongue examination is a subjective and inaccurate diagnostic method, a scientific tool which can provide objective and accurate information is needed to assist the TCM practitioners in their practice. The purpose of the study was to examine the feasibility of developing a glossoscopy from an optical coherence tomography (OCT) imaging system. In the present study, an OCT system was used to examine the tongue of the rat. After examination, the tongue was surgically removed, sectioned by a microtome and put on a glass slide for histological examination. The slides were examined under a bright-field microscope. Resu lts of the OCT imaging studies showed that the OCT system was capable of showing the images of three distinct regions of the tongue: the tongue coating layers, the interface between the tongue coating and th e tongue body, and the tongue body. It was also possible to assign an index number to each of the coating layers. When the tongue tissue was examined under a microscope, three separate regions of the tongue also were visible. Results of this pilot study shows that the OCT potentially can be developed into a glossoscopy for clinical ap plication in TCM practice. Key words: Optical Coherence Tomography (OCT); Glossoscopy; Tongue Coating; Microstructures of Tongue