Understanding the development of spoken language in young children has become increasingly important for advancing basic theories of language acquisition and for clinical practice. However, such a goal requires refined measurements of speech articulation (e.g., from the tongue), which are difficult to obtain from young children. In recent years though, technological advances have allowed developmental researchers to make significant steps in that direction. For instance, movements of the tongue, an articulator that is essential for spoken language, can now be tracked and recorded in children with ultrasound imaging. This technique has opened novel research avenues in (a)typical language acquisition, enabling researchers to reliably capture what has long remained invisible in the speech of young children. Within this context, we have designed an experimental platform for the recording and the processing of kinematic data: SOLLAR (Sonographic and Optical Linguo-Labial Articulatory Recording system). The method has been tailored for children, but it is suitable for adults. In the present article, we introduce the recording environment developed to record over 100 children and 30 adults within SOLLAR. We then describe SOLLAR's data processing framework, providing examples of data visualization and a summary of strengths and limitations.
Tape recordings of nine esophageal and three normal speakers reading lists of stop- and fricative-initial consonant-vowel nonsense syllables were judged by eighteen listeners in a forced-choice intelligibility test. Esophageal stops and fricatives were significantly less intelligible than the normal productions. Error analysis of esophageal stops revealed 78.4% cognate voicing errors, the majority of errors occurring with voiceless stops. Measures of voice onset time (VOT) showed insufficient lag for the esophageal voiceless stops. In addition, post-burst aspiration was negligible for these voiceless stops. Burst amplitude was significantly higher for voiceless apical and velar stops than for their voiced cognates. Analysis of esophageal fricative errors revealed 59.2% cognate voicing errors. Proportion of voicing in steady state frication was calculated for all productions. Correct perception of voicing was found to be primarily a function of this measure. Using this proportion, 82% of the voicing judgments could be predicted. [This investigation was supported by NINCDS research grant no. NS 08041 and HRA predoctoral training grant no. MCT-000202-21-0.]
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