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Past work investigating the lingual articulation of devoiced vowels in Tokyo Japanese has revealed optional but categorical deletion. Some devoiced vowels retained a full lingual target, just like their voiced counterparts, whereas others showed trajectories that are best modelled as targetless, i.e., linear interpolation between the surrounding vowels. The current study explored the hypothesis that this probabilistic deletion is modulated by the identity of the surrounding consonants. A new EMA experiment with an extended stimulus set replicates the core finding of Shaw, Jason & Shigeto Kawahara. 2018b. The lingual gesture of devoiced [u] in Japanese. Journal of Phonetics 66. 100–119. DOI:https://doi.org/10.1016/j.wocn.2017.09.007 that Japanese devoiced [u] sometimes lacks a tongue body raising gesture. The current results moreover show that surrounding consonants do indeed affect the probability of tongue dorsum targetlessness. We found that deletion of devoiced vowels is affected by the place of articulation of the preceding consonant; deletion is more likely following a coronal fricative than a labial fricative. Additionally, we found that the manner combination of the flanking consonants, fricative–fricative versus fricative–stop, also has an effect, at least for some speakers; however, unlike the effect of C1 place, the direction of the manner combination effect varies across speakers with some deleting more often in fricative–stop environments and others more often in fricative–fricative environments.

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 research on articulatory correlates of syllable structure suggests that the temporal organization of syllables varies as a function of the segmental make-up of the onset cluster, yet there is currently little understanding of the details conditioning this variation. We pursue the hypothesis that consonantal coarticulation resistance is one such segment-based determinant of onset-vowel timing. In order to test this we recorded articulography data for Polish and systematically varied the coarticulation resistance of C2 in #C1C2V clusters. We examined singleton and cluster onsets with different vowel-adjacent consonants in terms of temporal lag measurements as done in previous studies as well as in terms of tongue body position measurements. Both analyses revealed parallel results and substantiate the hypothesized interaction of coarticulation resistance of the vowel-adjacent consonant and onset-vowel organization. We discuss how this interaction between articulator dominance and temporal overlap can be modeled within the gestural approach to syllable organization by giving a novel interpretation to the coupling strength parameter in terms of coarticulation resistance.

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.

This study reports on the results of an acoustic investigation on the effects of contextual vowels on alveolar laterals in two languages, Spanish and Catalan. In particular, two contact varieties of these languages, those spoken on the island of Majorca, are compared. Catalan /l/ has been described as “dark” and Spanish /l/ as “light” or “clear,” and these characterizations have been confirmed with acoustic and articulatory data. Furthermore, it has been suggested that pharyngealization (or velarization) degree in the laterals affects their degree of coarticulatory resistance, with pharyngealized laterals being more resistant to coarticulation than non-pharyngealized ones. This is attributed to tighter articulatory control of the tongue body in pharyngealized than non-pharyngealized laterals. This study tests this hypothesis with acoustic data from 10 (Majorcan) Catalan and 10 (Majorcan) Spanish male speakers, and it shows that coarticulatory resistance is indeed modulated by the degree of pharyngealization of the laterals. Importantly, in addition to finding a difference in coarticulatory resistance between the two language varieties, the study finds that by-speaker average pharyngealization in the laterals is a significant linear predictor of by-speaker coarticulatory resistance in these sounds.

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 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 ...

This paper investigates acoustic characteristics of Korean /s/ before a high front segment and argues that Korean /s/ shows acoustic characteristics of a palatalized segment due to the coarticulation with the following high front segments. In Experiment, it is shown that the first 30 msec of /s/ before /i, ye, ya/ shows spectral peaks around 4 kHz whereas /s/ before open vowels like /e, a/ shows peaks around 6 kHz. We suggest that this is due to the tongue body position at the palatal area placed at the beginning of /s/ when it is followed by /i/ or /y/. Center of gravity frequency, and band energy difference also show differences of Korean /s/ in different contexts. Based on the results of this experiment, we argue that Korean /s/ is modified from its beginning due to the coarticulation with the following segments if articulators of /s/ are compatible with those of the following segments. Interestingly, this paper also shows that in case /s/ is followed by /yu/ or /yo/, its spectral shape shows significant differences from /s/ followed by /ya/ or /ye/. It raises the question that in Korean the domain of coarituclation may be larger than the target and its immediately surrounding segment.

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%.

Using a combination of magnetometry and ultrasound, we examined the articulatory characteristics of the so-called ‘transparent’ vowels [iː], [i], and [eː] in Hungarian vowel harmony. Phonologically, transparent vowels are front, but they can be followed by either front or back suffixes. However, a finer look reveals an underlying phonetic coherence in two respects. First, transparent vowels in back harmony contexts show a less advanced (more retracted) tongue body posture than phonemically identical vowels in front harmony contexts: e.g. [i] in buli-val is less advanced than [i] in bili-vel. Second, transparent vowels in monosyllabic stems selecting back suffixes are also less advanced than phonemically identical vowels in stems selecting front suffixes: e.g. [iː] in ír, taking back suffixes, compared to [iː] of hír, taking front suffixes, is less advanced when these stems are produced in bare form (no suffixes). We thus argue that the phonetic degree of tongue body horizontal position correlates with the phonological alternation in suffixes. A hypothesis that emerges from this work is that a plausible phonetic basis for transparency can be found in quantal characteristics of the relation between articulation and acoustics of transparent vowels. More broadly, the proposal is that the phonology of transparent vowels is better understood when their phonological patterning is studied together with their articulatory and acoustic characteristics.

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.

This study presents acoustic and electro-magnetic articulometry (EMA) data for the vowel /i/ in preboundary position in French. The boundaries examined are the Utterance, the Intonational phrase, the Accentual phrase, the Word and the Syllable. Our results show that although durational effects of prosodic boundary are still very strong, the effects on supralaryngeal articulation and on spectral characteristics are not as clear as those for the vowel /a/ reported in our previous work (J. Acoust. Soc. Am. 113 (2003a, b) 516, 2834). For instance, no effects are observed on the jaw or on Fl or F2. However, differing effects observed on tongue body articulation for male and female speakers together with the same effect on F3 for all speakers suggest that speakers aim for an acoustic/auditory target rather than an articulatory target when producing /i/ at stronger boundaries. These articulatory and acoustic results are argued to reflect featural enhancement of /i/ in French at stronger boundaries, since French has a particularly crowded vowel space in the high front region.

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.