Analysing speech variability with ultrasound and EPG
Lead Research Organisation:
Queen Margaret University
Department Name: Speech and Hearing Sciences
Abstract
Abstracts are not currently available in GtR for all funded research. This is normally because the abstract was not required at the time of proposal submission, but may be because it included sensitive information such as personal details.
Organisations
Publications
Zharkova N
(2013)
A normative-speaker validation study of two indices developed to quantify tongue dorsum activity from midsagittal tongue shapes.
in Clinical linguistics & phonetics
Zharkova N
(2008)
An EPG and ultrasound study of lingual coarticulation in vowel-consonant sequences
in R. Sock, S. Fuchs & Y. Laprie (Eds), Proceedings of the 8th International Seminar on Speech Production 2008, Strasbourg, France, 8-12 December 2008
Zharkova N
(2009)
Measuring lingual coarticulation from midsagittal tongue contours: Description and example calculations using English /t/ and /?/
in Journal of Phonetics
| Description | - This postdoctoral fellowship has helped with disseminating the PhD results, improving skills in phonetic analysis, supervising student research, gaining experience in collaborative grant proposal writing, networking at conferences - A dataset containing simultaneous electropalatographic and ultrasound data was collected during the project - Coarticulatory characteristics of several Scottish Standard English consonants (/p/, /t/, /k/, /f/, /s/, /r/, /l/) and two vowels (/a/, /I/) were described in this work |
| Exploitation Route | - The dataset collected during the project, which includes simultaneous electropalatographic and ultrasound data is available to users on request - The methodology of analysing both electropalatographic and ultrasound data on tongue movements can be used in future research projects |
| Sectors | Education,Healthcare |
| Title | R script for calculating Nearest Neighbour distances between tongue curves |
| Description | The R script, written by Natalia Zharkova in 2014, implements in R the method of quantitative ultrasound tongue data analysis, described in Zharkova & Hewlett (2009, Journal of Phonetics). The method makes it possible to quantitatively compare sets tongue curves and to establish whether the two sets are significantly different from each other, and how different. The method has been used in several publications funded by a succession of ESRC grants to Natalia Zharkova (e.g., Zharkova et al. 2011 Motor Control, 2012 JIPA, 2014 JSLHR). The reference to R is as follows: R Development Core Team. R: a language and environment for statistical computing. Vienna: R Foundation for Statistical Computing; 2011. Available at http://www.R-project.org. Accessed June 1, 2012. |
| Type Of Material | Physiological assessment or outcome measure |
| Year Produced | 2014 |
| Provided To Others? | Yes |
| Impact | The script has been requested by academics and students from Queen Margaret University, the University of Glasgow, Universidade Estadual Paulista (Brazil), Yale University (New Haven, USA), Tokyo Dental College (Tokyo, Japan), University of Cincinnati (Ohio, USA), Royal Holloway University of London. |
| URL | http://edata.qmu.ac.uk/20/ |
| Title | R scripts for calculating two indices that quantify tongue dorsum activity (DEI and TCPI) |
| Description | The two indices, Dorsum Excursion Index (DEI) and Tongue Constraint Position Index (TCPI), were developed by Natalia Zharkova with the aim to quantify potential tongue dorsum overuse in speakers with cleft palate (Zharkova 2013, Cleft Palate-Craniofacial Journal). The indices have been validated on typical adult speech (Zharkova 2013, Clinical Linguistics & Phonetics) and applied to typical child and adolescent speech (Zharkova, Lickley and Hardcastle 2014, Proceedings of ISSP). The reference to R is as follows: R Development Core Team. R: a language and environment for statistical computing. Vienna: R Foundation for Statistical Computing; 2011. Available at http://www.R-project.org. Accessed June 1, 2012. |
| Type Of Material | Physiological assessment or outcome measure |
| Year Produced | 2014 |
| Provided To Others? | Yes |
| Impact | The indices have been requested by a number of academics, practitioners and students from Queen Margaret University, the University of Glasgow, University College Cork (Cork, Republic of Ireland), the University of Toronto (Toronto, Canada), New York University (New York, USA), Universidade Estadual Paulista (Brazil), Yale University (New Haven, USA), Tokyo Dental College (Tokyo, Japan), University of Cincinnati (Ohio, USA), Royal Holloway University of London. |
| URL | http://edata.qmu.ac.uk/20/ |
| Title | Typical adult speakers' tongue shapes for several consonants in contrasting vowel environments |
| Description | The dataset contains text files with x-y coordinate values of tongue curves for seven different consonants (/p, t, k, f, s, l, r/) produced in two different vowel contexts (/i/ and /a/) by six adult speakers of Scottish Standard English, in carrier sentences. |
| Type Of Material | Database/Collection of data |
| Year Produced | 2014 |
| Provided To Others? | Yes |
| Impact | The dataset, generated by Natalia Zharkova during the ESRC postdoctoral fellowship, has been used in a number of research papers (Zharkova 2007, 2008, 2013 CLP, 2013 CPCJ). The dataset has also been requested by researchers and PhD students from the UK, Canada, the USA, Brazil and Japan. |
| URL | http://edata.qmu.ac.uk/20/ |
| Description | Conference poster (Strasbourg, France), An EPG and ultrasound study of lingual coarticulation in vowel-consonant sequences |
| Form Of Engagement Activity | A talk or presentation |
| Part Of Official Scheme? | No |
| Geographic Reach | International |
| Primary Audience | Other academic audiences (collaborators, peers etc.) |
| Results and Impact | A poster by Natalia Zharkova at the 8th International Seminar on Speech Production 2008, Strasbourg, France, 8-12 December 2008. Discussions after this talk led to formulating new ideas for postgraduate and undergraduate research student projects, as well as ideas for improving existing methods of analysing tongue curves to achieve clinically relevant results. |
| Year(s) Of Engagement Activity | 2008 |
| Description | Conference talk (Edinburgh), Using synchronised EPG and ultrasound data for analysing coarticulation |
| Form Of Engagement Activity | A talk or presentation |
| Part Of Official Scheme? | No |
| Geographic Reach | International |
| Primary Audience | Other academic audiences (collaborators, peers etc.) |
| Results and Impact | A talk by Natalia Zharkova at the 5th International Electropalatography (EPG) Symposium, Edinburgh, UK, 1-2 September 2008. This talk led to interesting discussions with speech and language therapists who attended the conference. Also, in 2009 Natalia Zharkova was invited to give a presentation and a workshop to the Research Group in Clinical Linguistics (Department of Linguistics, University of Oslo) and to give a presentation at the Department of Speech and Hearing Sciences, University College Cork. |
| Year(s) Of Engagement Activity | 2008 |
| Description | Conference talk (New York), Coarticulation resistance quantification in several Scottish English phonemes |
| Form Of Engagement Activity | A talk or presentation |
| Part Of Official Scheme? | No |
| Geographic Reach | International |
| Primary Audience | Other academic audiences (collaborators, peers etc.) |
| Results and Impact | A talk by Natalia Zharkova at Ultrafest IV 2007 (Ultrasound meeting), New York University, New York, NY, USA, 28-29 September 2007. The talk contributed to making this work known in the international community of researchers using ultrasound for clinical and language teaching applications. The method used in the study (published in Zharkova & Hewlett 2009, Journal of Phonetics) was later used in a study presented at Ultrafest VI in Edinburgh in 2013 (Frisch et al., 2013). |
| Year(s) Of Engagement Activity | 2007 |
| Description | Seminar talk (Edinburgh), Coarticulation resistance of English consonants and vowels: an ultrasound study |
| Form Of Engagement Activity | A talk or presentation |
| Part Of Official Scheme? | No |
| Geographic Reach | Regional |
| Primary Audience | Other academic audiences (collaborators, peers etc.) |
| Results and Impact | A talk by Natalia Zharkova at the Phonetics/Phonology Workshop and Centre for Speech Technology Research Seminar 2006-2007, The University of Edinburgh, Edinburgh, 27 March 2007. Discussions after this talk led to formulating new ideas for postgraduate and undergraduate research student projects. |
| Year(s) Of Engagement Activity | 2007 |
| URL | http://www.cstr.ed.ac.uk/cgi-bin/cstr/lists.cgi?config=pworkshop |
| Description | Seminar talk (Edinburgh), Ultrasound evidence for degrees of articulatory constraint in consonants and vowels |
| Form Of Engagement Activity | A talk or presentation |
| Part Of Official Scheme? | No |
| Geographic Reach | Local |
| Primary Audience | Other academic audiences (collaborators, peers etc.) |
| Results and Impact | A talk by Natalia Zharkova at the Speech and Hearing Sciences Research Seminar 2006-2007, Queen Margaret University, Edinburgh, 19 March 2007. Discussions after this talk led to formulating new ideas for postgraduate and undergraduate research student projects. The method of tongue curve analysis reported in the talk (published in Zharkova & Hewlett 2009, Journal of Phonetics) was since used in a number of BSc honours projects at Queen Margaret University, as well as in a PhD at Queen Margaret University (Kocjan?i? 2010). |
| Year(s) Of Engagement Activity | 2007 |
| Description | Summer school oral presentation (Autrans, France), Differences in coarticulation resistance between vowels and consonants: an ultrasound study |
| Form Of Engagement Activity | A talk or presentation |
| Part Of Official Scheme? | No |
| Geographic Reach | International |
| Primary Audience | Postgraduate students |
| Results and Impact | Oral presentation by Natalia Zharkova at the international summer school "Cognitive and Physical Models of Speech Production, Perception and Perception-Production Interaction. Part II: Brain and Speech", Autrans, France, 16-21 September 2007. Discussions during the summer school led to formulating new ideas for postgraduate and undergraduate research student projects. |
| Year(s) Of Engagement Activity | 2007 |
| Description | Tutorial (Edinburgh), Using ultrasound to investigate tongue movements in speech |
| Form Of Engagement Activity | Participation in an activity, workshop or similar |
| Part Of Official Scheme? | No |
| Geographic Reach | International |
| Primary Audience | Undergraduate students |
| Results and Impact | A tutorial by Natalia Zharkova, within the Professional Day for Students from the Department of Communicative Sciences and Disorders, Michigan State University, 11 July 2007. The tutorial was followed by a question-and-answer session, with some challenging questions from the students. |
| Year(s) Of Engagement Activity | 2007 |