Dissertation Research: Phonetic Theory and Cross-Linguistic Variation in Vowel Articulation

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This is a study of the articulation of vowels in a large number of languages, through the examination of collections of x-ray photographs located in repositories in Budapest, Strasbourg, Toronto, and Iowa City. No new x-ray photographs will be made. It is expected that comparison of these photographs will demonstrate that the range of variation across speakers of a given language will be systematically constrained, and from language to language there will be regular differences in vowel articulation. This study has the potential to contribute to a quantitative model of articulation in support of phonological theory, which until now has made tenuous connections between basically perceptual features and the actual configuation of the vocal track during speech production. The hypothesis of the investigators is that there is a finite set of "articulatory primes" which serve as the building blocks of all vowel articulations observed across languages.