The role of a coda consonant as error trigger in repetition tasks

Abstract

Speech errors are known to exhibit an intrusion bias in that segments are added rather than deleted; also, a shared final consonant can cause an interaction of the initial consonants. A principled connection between these two phenomena has been drawn in a gestural account of errors: Articulatory measures revealed a preponderance of errors in which both the target and intruding gesture are coproduced, instead of one replacing the other. This gestural intrusion bias has been interpreted as an errorful coupling of gestures in a dynamically stable coordination mode (1:1, in-phase), triggered by the presence of a shared coda consonant. Capturing tongue motion with ultrasound, the current paper investigates whether shared gestural composition other than a coda can trigger gestural co-production errors. Subjects repeated two-word phrases with alternating initial stop or fricative consonants in a coda condition (e.g., top cop), a nocoda condition (e.g., taa kaa) and a three-word phrase condition (e.g., taa kaa taa). The no-coda condition showed a lower error rate than the coda condition. The three-word phrase condition elicited an intermediate error rate for the stop consonants, but a high error rate for the fricative alternations. While all conditions exhibited both substitution and coproduction errors, a gestural intrusion bias emerged mainly for the coda condition. The findings suggest that the proportion of different error types (substitutions, co-production errors) differs as a function of stimulus type: not all alternating stimulus patterns that trigger errors result in an intrusion bias.

Ultrasound applicability in Speech Language Pathology and Audiology

“…Acoustic analysis of speech and voice has been used for a long time as tool for analysis of altered cases, for promoting more accurate diagnoses, and as the monitoring procedure of the therapeutic process, both by speech language pathologist and by the patient (1)(2)(3)(4) . The articulatory analysis in the area of speech and orofacial motricity emerges as a new possibility, especially at the national level (5)(6)(7)(8)(9)(10) , for integration of these analyses already mentioned, using, for example, the ultrasonography for evaluation of tongue movements (11)(12)(13)(14)(15)(16)(17)(18)(19)(20)(21)(22) , and of the hyoid bone (19,(23)(24)(25)(26)(27) , without inserting devices within the oral cavity.…”

An identity bias in phonotactics: Evidence from Cochabamba Quechua

“…A more specific proposal for an articulatory preference for identity comes from studies of gestural phasing (Pouplier and Goldstein 2005;Goldstein et al 2007;Pouplier 2008). When participants are asked to repeat phrases like top cop, which involve alternating alveolar and velar onsets in otherwise matching syllables, articulatory data show intrusion errors where a velar gesture is produced during the alveolar gesture, changing the alternating phasing of the alveolar and velar gestures to be simultaneous.…”

“…When participants are asked to repeat phrases like top cop, which involve alternating alveolar and velar onsets in otherwise matching syllables, articulatory data show intrusion errors where a velar gesture is produced during the alveolar gesture, changing the alternating phasing of the alveolar and velar gestures to be simultaneous. Pouplier (2008) finds that intrusion errors resulting in synchronous gestures are more likely the more material is shared between the interacting structures; a shared coda consonant in phrases like top cop increases error rate compared to phrases with only a shared vowel, like taa kaa. Applying these results to the data here, identical pairs of ejectives may be preferred to non-identical ejective pairs or pairs of an ejective and a plain homorganic stop because of the synchronous relationship between the place and glottal onset gestures in [p'up'a], as compared to the alternating place or glottal gestures required in [p'upa] or [p'uk'a].…”

“…To pursue an explanation for the current results in speech planning, work needs to be done that explicitly addresses speech planning considerations for ejectives and plain stops in CQ and establishes a production preference for repeated, simultaneous gestures. A task could be designed that more closely resembles the conditions that triggered errors in top cop phrases in Pouplier and Goldstein (2005), Goldstein et al (2007), and Pouplier (2008). In those experiments, participants were asked to repeat the same phrase with alternating onsets over and over.…”

Measuring lingual coarticulation from midsagittal tongue contours: Description and example calculations using English /t/ and /ɑ/

“…The indices were based on tongue height values computed using a concentric measurement grid with measurement lines spaced out in equal intervals, superimposed on the ultrasound scan. For examples of using measurement lines to quantify differences in tongue regions in other ultrasound phonetic studies not specifically focussed on analysing coarticulation, see Gick et al (2006) andPouplier (2008). Gordon et al (2007) compared whole curves for several consonants, using the smoothing spline ANOVA technique (see Davidson, 2006, for more details on the technique); however, the technique allows for determining "whether the shapes of multiple curves are significantly different from one another" (Davidson 2006, p. 411), but not for quantifying the extent of difference between the curves.…”