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UvA-DARE (Digital Academic Repository) Aspects of Pharyngeal Coarticulation Elgendy, A. Publication date 2001 Link to publication Citation for published version (APA): Elgendy, A. (2001). Aspects of Pharyngeal Coarticulation. LOT. General rights It is not permitted to download or to forward/distribute the text or part of it without the consent of the author(s) and/or copyright holder(s), other than for strictly personal, individual use, unless the work is under an open content license (like Creative Commons). Disclaimer/Complaints regulations If you believe that digital publication of certain material infringes any of your rights or (privacy) interests, please let the Library know, stating your reasons. In case of a legitimate complaint, the Library will make the material inaccessible and/or remove it from the website. Please Ask the Library: https://uba.uva.nl/en/contact, or a letter to: Library of the University of Amsterdam, Secretariat, Singel 425, 1012 WP Amsterdam, The Netherlands. You will be contacted as soon as possible. UvA-DARE is a service provided by the library of the University of Amsterdam (https://dare.uva.nl) Download date:04 Oct 2021 3 3 Jaww contribution to the timing control of pharyngeal consonantt production1 Abstract t JawJaw kinematics associated with pharyngeal consonant production in Arabic C1WC2 utterancesutterances were registered. The results revealed that temporal perturbation due to the effect ofof the biomechanical constraints characterizing this class of speech sounds, is internally compensatedcompensated for by a strategy adapted by the speaker aiming to control inter-consonantal timing.timing. That is, the degree of adjustment in vowel duration is mainly dependent on the inherentinherent relative degree of jaw height of the surrounding consonants comprising the word. TheThe present findings suggest that 1) the jaw is actively involved in the production process of notnot only oral consonants, but also pharyngeal consonants; 2) temporal re-organization in the utteranceutterance that is required due to the presence of a pharyngeal consonant, is mainly controlled byby the jaw. Based on these findings we propose that the jaw, as an articulatory parameter, cancan be actively integrated in the frameworks of current articulatory modeling of speech as the articulatorarticulator which tackles some aspects of temporal specifications of syllable structure. Moreover,Moreover, the present findings suggest that physiological constraints affecting the mechanicalmechanical system governing the vocal apparatus are centrally taken into account in the preplanningpreplanning scheme of the articulatory process. 11 Substantially extended and revised version of a paper presented at FONETIK'92, Göteborg, Sweden (Elgendy, 1992). 90 0 CHAPTERR 3 3.1.. Introduction Inn this chapter we examine jaw kinematics associated with pharyngeal articulation. The aim is too find out whether the jaw has a direct contribution in pharyngeal consonant production and whetherr its movement is coordinated with that of the other articulators during consonant production,, particularly pharyngeals. 3.1.1.. The role of the jaw in speech production Inn recent models of speech production, attempts have been made to account for the overlap foundd among the articulatory movements during various speech sounds in a sequence. These coarticulatoryy effects, which can be spatial and/or temporal in nature, imply the necessity of definingg invariant and discrete units serving as input to the system of speech processing. The factt that speech articulators, e.g., the lips, the tongue, the velum, the larynx, and the jaw, interactt in a highly coordinated way, requires specifications of the sensory-motor activities andd their acoustic consequences during the process of speech production. Thee view that the jaw plays a secondary role in the motor control system of the speech productionn is commonplace in current phonetic trends. This view holds that the lower jaw is passivelyy involved in the articulatory plan of speech neuromotor activities. That is. the jaw is merelyy used to aid the tongue or the lips to reach various constriction points in the oral (front) cavityy for consonants or to accommodate the height which the tongue seeks to t each during variouss vowel articulations. However,, in some recent studies, attempts have been made to emphasize the primary role off the jaw in the timing control of syllable structure, e.g., Tuller, Kelso and 1.arris (1982); Macchii (1985; 1988); Edwards and Harris (1990); Beekman, Edwards and Fletcher (1992). Inn a study investigating the acoustic consequences of tongue, lips, larvnx, and jaw movementss in Swedish, it was argued that jaw displacement, when keeping the tongue contourr invariant with respect to the jaw, is inversely proportional to the pharyngeal cavity sizee and that the degree of the constriction of the pharynx is dependent on tru- degree of the jaww opening (Lindblom and Sundberg, 1971). The model presented by Lindblom and Sundbergg suggests that the tongue is causing the jaw to play a role in altering the size of the pharyngeall cavity during vowel articulation. That is, moving the tongue backwards and downwardss will bring its root to occupy part of the pharyngeal cavity hence reducing the pharynxx volume. This tongue movement will cause the jaw to be lowered proportionally to thee degree of the tongue depression and retraction. Accordingg to the view of Lindblom and Sundberg (1971), we understand that the jaw is passivelyy involved in shaping the pharynx and that the tongue is the major articulator responsiblee for various types of articulation whether a consonant or a vowel is involved. The jaww in that model is considered merely as indirectly assisting the tongue to be placed accuratelyy at positions required for vowels as well as consonants. That is the tongue, being carriedd by the jaw due to a mechanical link will cause the jaw to follow its movement in the samee direction. In other words, the tongue movement dominates that of the jaw. Reported experimentss using induced perturbation on jaw movements support that view. When a bite- blockk was inserted between the jaws to prevent the mandible from moving with the tongue in thee same direction, the tongue still could reach its target position for high vowels (Lindblom, Lubkerr and Gay 1979; Gay, Lindblom and Lubker 1981). Compensating for the perturbation JAWW CONTRIBUTION OF THE TIMING CONTROL 91 1 appliedd on the jaw by excessive tongue raising to achieve a lingual target is not evidence that thee muscles which elevate the jaw do not receive neural commands; nor does that mean that thee tongue is the only active articulator used to produce high vowels and the mandible just followss its movement. Phoneticc segments for which a reduction in the pharyngeal cavity size is involved in their production,, whether vowels or consonants, are produced either by an active or by a passive way.. By retracting the tongue body backward and downward, so that it fills a part of the cavityy of the pharynx, the reduction in the pharyngeal volume is passive. As a result, the pharyngeall cavity will be decreased in size with an equivalent increase in size of the oral cavityy compared to the neutral shape of the tract. The active way the pharynx can be used to producee such speech sound segments, would be by means of another more complex mechanism,, such as that during the production of pharyngeal consonants, i.e., by contraction off the pharyngeal walls. As we have demonstrated earlier in Chapter 2, the pharynx can be activelyy constricted at various points along its length to produce varieties of speech sounds. Thee study of Elgendy (1985.b) demonstrated that the jaw plays an even more distinct role duringg speech production, particularly, during the complex articulation of pharyngeal consonantss in Egyptian Arabic. The findings from this study indicate that the jaw undergoes a severee restriction, prohibiting it from anticipating to the upcoming phonemes in the utterance beforee completing the gesture for the pharyngeal consonant. The jaw, by adapting different heightss for the pharyngeal consonant, could compensate for the time delay caused by the mechanicall constraints due to the complexity of the pharyngeal consonant. The mandible has beenn shown to possess an extreme degree of jaw opening during the initial /?/ or /h/in a word (upp to 28 mm for some speakers). In addition, the jaw opening for these pharyngeal consonantss is always greater than for vowels. When an emphatic consonant, i.e., /t /, /dV, /sV, /z9/,, is introduced in the utterance, the vowel /a?/ becomes a pharyngealized Id and its featuress spread around to all segments. According to X-ray pictures (Wood, 1979), the profile off the tongue during the Egyptian Arabic low vowel Id has a lower and a more retracted positionn than /ae/ (see also Figure 1.14). However, the jaw displayed a higher position (less opened)) during Id than during /ae/. This indicates that the tongue movement is independent of thee jaw movement during the production of pharyngeal consonants. We interpreted this observationn as a co-ordination between the conflicted direction of movements of jaw and tongue.. That is in disagreement with current articulatory models which take the jaw as the articulatorr which accommodates the tongue position during the production of all types of phoneticc segments (e.g., Lindblom, 1983; Keating et al., 1994). Inn chapter 2 we have demonstrated that the production of the true pharyngeal consonants inn Egyptian Arabic is characterized by a complex mechanism involving the control of coordinatedd activities of the pharynx, the epiglottis and the larynx. The findings by Elgendy (198S.b;; 1999) suggest that the resulting coarticulatory effect causes the jaw to sustain certain mechanicall constraints which are as exacting as those for sibilants like /s/ in terms of the degreee of jaw opening. These mechanical constraints were realized as an antagonistic movementt of the jaw to the tongue movement, temporal reorganization of the syllable containingg a pharyngeal consonant and extreme degree of jaw lowering associated with a pharyngeall consonant.