ARTICULATORY RESEARCH


The data displayed on this page was collected using Electromagnetic Articulography (EMA) and Electropalatography (EPG), two techniques which give direct measures of articulation.

EPG Palate

EMA subject

Electropalatography (EPG) uses a thin artificial palate to measure tongue-palate contact during an utterance. Contact of the tongue with any of the 62 electrodes embedded in the palate completes an electrical circuit, and tongue-palate contact is registered. The system used was developed at Reading.

In Electromagnetic Articulography (EMA) electromagnetic transducers, mounted in a helmet worn by the subject, induce a current in small coils placed on the articulators. The strength of the current is used to calculate the position of the articulators. The picture shows a subject wearing the Carstens AG100 Articulograph helmet and the artificial palate displayed. Coils are mounted on the subject's tongue and the bridge of his nose.


The sentence "Have you uttered a leap at home?" was produced by the male speaker of standard Southern British English shown above. The picture on the left below (EMA Profile) shows a trace of the subject's hard palate and the trajectories followed by the EMA coils during the utterance. The right-hand picture shows the waveform of the utterance over time and the movement of each of the coils in the x and y directions separately (colour-coded to match the trajectories).

EMA trajectories EMA coils and waveform display

This data was collected as part of research on long-distance coarticulation by Paula West.

P. West, Oxford University Phonetics Lab, 11/1998


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