Breathing and swallowing during pauses in connected speech: An acoustical and physiological study

2017 Fiscal Year Final Research Report

• Project/Area Number: 15K02485
• Research Category: Grant-in-Aid for Scientific Research (C)
• Allocation Type: Multi-year Fund
• Section: 一般
• Research Field: Linguistics
• Research Institution: Toyama Prefectural University
• Principal Investigator: Kakita Kuniko 富山県立大学, 工学部, 名誉教授 (10148827)
• Co-Investigator(Renkei-kenkyūsha): HIKI Shizuo 早稲田大学, 人間科学学術院, 名誉教授 (50006227)
• Project Period (FY): 2015-04-01 – 2018-03-31
• Keywords: ポーズ / 呼吸 / 嚥下 / 読み上げ発話 / 自発発話

Outline of Final Research Achievements

Simultaneous recordings of speech, breathing, and swallowing signals were obtained while ten native Japanese speakers produced different types of connected speech, both read and spontaneous. The results included the following new findings. Swallowing was found to be more frequent during speech production as compared to silent reading, as reported previously by other researchers. It has also been reported that swallowing is generally followed by expiration, but swallowing during connected speech was predominantly followed by inspiration. This was typical of read speech, but a considerable number of swallowing was also followed by expiration in spontaneous speech. Swallowing occurred primarily during sentence-final pauses in read speech but also during sentence-medial pauses in spontaneous speech. Swallowing tended to occur more often at topic transitions both in read speech and spontaneous speech.

Free Research Field

音声言語科学