Tongue Movements and Phonology

Presenters: Jeff Mielke

T2MRC3

Spoken language involves a complex system of rapid tongue movements that are typically out of view of speakers and listeners. In this workshop we will use ultrasound imaging to study tongue motion in real time and in recordings, in order to learn about how we use our tongues in speech production and to explore what lingual articulation reveals about the organization of language. We will begin by learning about tongue motion in general and proceed to exploring lingual articulation of sounds in various languages as well as familiar cases of variation and change in English. We will see what tongue motion reveals about speech planning, and we will see how tongue motion can drive language variation and change. Attendees will be introduced to best practices for lingual ultrasound imaging, recording, and analysis.

Keywords: Experimental Methods, Production, Productivity, Phonetics, Phonology, Variation

Presenters

Jeff Mielke

North Carolina State University

Jeff Mielke is a professor at North Carolina State University. His research is in the domain of laboratory phonology, and he is particularly interested in using articulatory and computational tools to study how speech production and perception interact with phonological systems. His recent work has focused on the articulation of vowels in understudied languages and speech production in jaw surgery patients. He is the author of The Emergence of Distinctive Features (Oxford University Press, 2008), and he is currently an associate editor for Journal of Phonetics and for Linguistic Typology.