Linguistics Dissertations and Theses

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https://hdl.handle.net/2022/20347

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ARTICULATORY AND ACOUSTIC PHONETICS OF VOICE ACTING
([Bloomington, Ind.] : Indiana University, 2021-11) Feehan, Colette; de Jong, Kenneth
Professional voice actors are an excellent, but fairly untapped population for linguistic study. These actors are linguistically naïve but perform complex linguistic tasks throughout the course of their profession, and they perform these tasks safely, reliably, and consistently. While some previous studies used auditory and instrumental acoustic methods to investigate the speech produced by voice actors (Teshigawara, 2003; Teshigawara et. al., 2007; Teshigawara, 2009, cited in Teshigawara, 2011; Starr, 2015), in contrast there has been very little research on their articulation (Teshigawara & Murano, 2004). This work uses a combination of 3D/4D ultrasound, electroglottography (EGG), audio recordings, and webcam footage to observe the articulations of six voice actors (3 professionals and 3 amateurs) and compare those articulations to the acoustic outputs. Each actor read a syllable list and two stories from the Goldman Fristoe Test of Articulation 3rd ed. in both their regular adult speaking voice and a simulated child voice. Some general findings of this study indicate that actors do produce different acoustic outputs for a child voice compared to their adult voice including higher fundamental frequency (F0), different averages in acoustic measurement of vowel formants, and shorter estimates of vocal tract length. The ultrasound data indicate that actors also alter the place of lingual constriction to be more anterior, farther forward in the mouth, when imitating a child voice. EGG data, while limited to only two subjects due to the 2020 pandemic, indicate that actors may also raise their larynx to shorten the vocal tract while speaking in an imitated child voice. This work opens a new angle for linguistic study while also providing an empirical basis upon which new pedagogical methods to teach voice acting can be developed. Looking at voice actors speaking with intentionally contorted tongue positions could help us learn more about over which muscles we have volitional control within the vocal tract. This could help to improve interventions in speech therapy and even test and update acoustic-articulatory models of speech.
Saafi: A Grammatical Sketch
([Bloomington, Ind.] : Indiana University, 2011-12-14) Piquero, Erika; Botne, Robert
Saafi is a Niger-Congo language spoken in Senegal. It is an Atlantic language of a subset of Northern languages. It is in the group of Cangin languages and is closely related to Wolof, Noon, and several other languages. A simple internet search will show that there is currently little to no documentation on this language that is spoken by some 200,000 people. This grammatical sketch is compiled from data elicited from Adrien Pouille, a consultant. Adrien is a thirty-three year old male who was born in Thies, Senegal. He learned to speak Saafi at the age of six. His family communicates primarily in Wolof, but his paternal relatives are Saafi. Adrien also speaks English and French fluently. Adrien lived with his family near the city of Thies until coming to the U.S. in 2004. The methodology I have adopted is primarily direct elicitation in individual sessions with the consultant. I have also used aids such as photos to elicit data in a more natural setting. The consultant has also translated several passages and provided some of his own in the elicitation sessions.
Typologizing Native Language Influence on Intonation in a Second Language: Three Transfer Phenomena in Japanese EFL Learners
([Bloomington, Ind.] : Indiana University, 2015-07) Albin, Aaron Lee; de Jong, Kenneth;; Darcy, Isabelle
While a substantial body of research has accumulated regarding how intonation is acquired in a second language (L2), the topic has historically received relatively little attention from mainstream models of L2 phonology. As such, a unified theoretical framework suited to address unique acquisitional challenges specific to this domain of L2 knowledge (such as form-function mapping) has been lacking. The theoretical component of the dissertation makes progress on this front by taking up the issue of crosslinguistic transfer in L2 intonation. Using Mennen's (2015) L2 Intonation Learning theory as a point of departure, the available empirical studies are synthesized into a typology of the different possible ways two languages' intonation systems can mismatch as well as the concomitant implications for transfer. Next, the methodological component of the dissertation presents a framework for overcoming challenges in the analysis of L2 learners' intonation production due to the interlanguage mixing of their native and L2 systems. The proposed method involves first creating a stylization of the learner's intonation contour and then running queries to extract phonologically-relevant features of interest for a particular research question. A novel approach to stylization is also introduced that not only allows for transitions between adjacent pitch targets to have a nonlinear shape but also explicitly parametrizes and stores this nonlinearity for analysis. Finally, these two strands are integrated in a third, empirical component to the dissertation. Three kinds of intonation transfer, representing nodes from different branches of the typology, are examined in Japanese learners of English as a Foreign Language (EFL). For each kind of transfer, fourteen sentences were selected from a large L2 speech corpus (English Speech Database Read by Japanese Students), and productions of each sentence by approximately 20-30 learners were analyzed using the proposed method. Results suggest that the three examined kinds of transfer are stratified into a hierarchy of relative frequency, with some phenomena occurring much more pervasively than others. Together as a whole, the present dissertation lays the groundwork for future research on L2 intonation by not only generating empirical predictions to be tested but also providing the analytical tools for doing so.

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