Ultrasound study of voicing in Russian obstruents

2016 Fiscal Year Final Research Report

• Project/Area Number: 15H06832
• Research Category: Grant-in-Aid for Research Activity Start-up
• Allocation Type: Single-year Grants
• Research Field: Linguistics
• Research Institution: National Institute for Japanese Language and Linguistics
• Principal Investigator: Matsui Mayuki 大学共同利用機関法人人間文化研究機構国立国語研究所, 理論・対照研究領域, プロジェクトPDフェロー (00759011)
• Research Collaborator: Arakawa Yoshiko St. Petersburg State University, Dr. ; Konstantin I. Belousov Perm State University, Dr. ; Galina E. Kedrova Moscow State University, Dr.
• Project Period (FY): 2015-08-28 – 2017-03-31
• Keywords: Articulatory phonetics / Ultrasound imaging / Voicing contrast / Russian

Outline of Final Research Achievements

The purpose of the present study is to examine Russian voiced and voiceless obstruents in terms of articulatory phonetics. An ultrasound imaging technique was employed to visualize and quantify the movements of articulators. The results revealed some interesting aspects of tongue configuration during the production of Russian voiced and voiceless obstruents, such as interactions between voicing contrast and palatalization contrast. The results were situated in the cross-linguistic studies of supra-laryngeal gestural control during the production of laryngeal based contrast.

Free Research Field

Phonetics, Linguistics