Doctoral Dissertation Research: Articulatory and Corpus Study of Relative Timing among Consonants, Vowels, and Tones

语言学研究的一个核心主题是说话者对其语言的隐性知识。对于所有口语，部分知识包括发音器官（包括嘴唇、舌头和软腭）如何及时协调以产生语音。此外，许多语言还使用不同的音高模式（称为音调）来区分单词。该项目研究了声调是否与其他言语器官的协调相互作用，汇集了来自正在研究的藏语的几种类型的数据。从方法上讲，该项目将发音器物理运动的实验测量与在尼泊尔收集的音频数据结合起来，利用散居藏族社区中说话者之间发现的差异来了解声调、辅音和元音如何及时协调的基本原理。更广泛的影响包括公开存储录音，以便语言学家和社区成员未来的工作能够进行，捕捉正在经历快速变化的语言的快照。联合首席研究员是耶鲁大学的博士生，他将分析藏族侨民所说的藏语的声学和发音数据，藏语是一种尚未得到充分研究的语言，不同使用者之间存在显着差异。这种变化的一方面是一些说话者保留了音调，而另一些说话者则失去了音调对比。主要假设是词汇声调的存在改变了发音姿势的协调，由于言语产生的喉部和喉上方面的竞争需求的平衡而产生发音和声学结果。这项研究将对尼泊尔联合首席研究员收集的声学数据的分析扩展到自发语音语料库。语料库分析的重要依据是藏语发音运动学实验。该实验使用电磁关节描记术（EMA）来跟踪舌头和嘴唇的运动以及声音记录。除了在实验室语音中提供主要假设的测试之外，对共同注册的声学和运动学信号的分析还将建立可用于语料库分析的相对时序的声学测量。语料库研究将评估自然语音数据中的假设，考虑更广泛的影响时间的因素，进一步评估说话者内部和之间的变异性，并为未来的研究提供宝贵的资源。该项目将有助于科学理解声调的心理表征以及口腔、喉部和声调手势之间的时间关系，结合语料库和发音方法，从变异中获取证据，并推进对较少研究的语言的研究。该奖项反映了 NSF 的法定使命，并通过使用基金会的智力价值和更广泛的影响审查标准进行评估，被认为值得支持。

A core topic of study in linguistics is the tacit knowledge that speakers have about their language. For all spoken languages, part of this knowledge includes how the speech organs, including the lips, tongue, and velum, are coordinated in time to produce speech. Additionally, many languages also distinguish words from each other using different pitch patterns, called tones. This project investigates whether tones interact with the coordination of other speech organs, drawing together several types of data from the understudied Tibetan language. Methodologically, the project integrates experimental measurements on the physical movement of articulators with audio data gathered in Nepal, harnessing the variation found between speakers in the diaspora Tibetan community to understand basic principles of how tones, consonants and vowels are coordinated in time. Broader impacts include the publicly available deposit of audio recordings to enable future work by linguists and community members, capturing a snapshot of a language undergoing rapid change. The Co-PI, a doctoral student at Yale University, will analyze acoustic and articulatory data of Tibetan as spoken in its diaspora, an understudied language with significant variation between speakers. One aspect of the variation is that some speakers have retained tone while others speakers have lost tone contrasts. The main hypothesis is that the presence of lexical tone alters the coordination of articulatory gestures, with articulatory and acoustic consequences resulting from the balance of competing demands of laryngeal and supralaryngeal aspects of speech production. This study extends analysis of acoustic data collected by the co-PI in Nepal to a corpus of spontaneous speech. The corpus analysis is crucially informed by an experiment on the articulatory kinematics of Tibetan. The experiment uses electromagnetic articulography (EMA) to track the movement of the tongue and lips together with acoustic recordings. Besides providing a test of the main hypothesis in laboratory speech, analysis of co-registered acoustic and kinematic signals will establish acoustic measures of relative timing that can be used in the corpus analysis. The corpus study will evaluate hypotheses in naturalistic speech data, allow consideration of a wider range of factors influencing timing, further assess variability within and across speakers, and provide a valuable resource for future research. This project will contribute to scientific understanding of the mental representation of tone and the timing relations among oral, laryngeal, and tonal gestures, combine corpus and articulatory methods, draw evidence from variation, and advance research on a less-studied language.This award reflects NSF's statutory mission and has been deemed worthy of support through evaluation using the Foundation's intellectual merit and broader impacts review criteria.