Aspects of speech production in typically-developing children

Laura L. KoenigHaskins Labs and LIU–

Brooklyn

Some significant people(non-exhaustive cast of characters)

Karen Landahl

Leigh Lisker

Arthur Abramson

Richard SchwartzKatherine Harris

Richard McGowan

Anders Löfqvist

In memory of Karen Landahl

1989: UPenn & Haskins

• Leigh Lisker …Made a suggestion to

• Arthur Abramson leading to …

Photo credit to Philip Rubin

Thursdays with Leigh and Arthur

• Lunch at the College Spa [“the trough”]• Wendy in soundbooth B: The

windowless guts of 270 Crown Street• Lipton tea (courtesy Haskins) and

Macintosh apples (courtesy Arthur) at midnight in the basement kitchen

• Bedtime: Signup sheets and room precedents

1991: CUNY & Haskins

• Thanks to Kathy for talking with me in soundbooth B... etc.

• Enter Anders and Richard

Airflow data: Papa HopperAcoustics

Airflow/h/

Airflow data: Papa SapperAcoustics

Airflow/s/

Laryngeal coarticulation in adults

Peak flow (l/m)

Löfqvist, Koenig & McGowan, 1995

Airflow data showing effects of vocal-fold abduction

Laryngeal control & Voice Onset Time

• Lisker & Abramson (1964)– Timing of voicing relative to stop release– Serves to characterize stop distinctions

across many languages– Googlescholar citations: 1579

• Subsequent transillumination studies (Lisker et al., 1969): Aspiration associated with abduction close to release.

• Löfqvist (1992): VOT-peak abduction correlations pretty good but not perfect.

VOT in Development (1)Developmental studies of voicing in stops

  Malcolm S. Preston, Grace Yeni-Komshian, Rachel E. Stark & Diane

Kewley-Port

Haskins Laboratories Status Report: SR-13/14

1 January 1968 - 30 June 1968V

VOT in Development (2)• Kewley Port & Preston (1974) (and others).• Hierarchy of “difficulty”:– Voiceless unaspirated [p t k] (short-lag) appear

first (Jakobson)Subsequently:– Voiced [b d g]: Require aerodynamic control

[more on this later]– Voiceless aspirated [ph th kh]: Require timing

control.• Assumption: Children have an established abduction

gesture; all they need to do is time it correctly.V

An aerodynamic study of consonantal voicing control in normal men, women, and 5-

year-olds

CUNY 1998

Katherine HarrisRichard SchwartzAnders Löfqvist

“Do something developmental”

“Look at /h/”

VOTh*

*A measure proposed by Richard McGowan, and it made some sense.

V O T (E)

Results (1): VOT and VOTh

100%

0%

50%

0%

Adult male Adult female

50 ms50 msKoenig,

2000

VOT and VOTh (2)

100%

0%

50%

0%

5-year-old

100 ms

Correlations for all speakers (N=21):

VOTh x VOT /p/: r =.64*VOTh x VOT /t/: r =.65*VOT /p/ x VOT /t/: r = .78* Koenig,

2000

/h/ profiles: Intraspeaker variability

Koenig, 2000

Inconsistent abduction in children

Koenig, 2000

Implications• At 5 years of age, many children still have

highly inconsistent laryngeal activity for /h/—where the only requirement is a laryngeal adjustment.

• If /h/ shows extreme variability in abduction extent and temporal patterns, it is sensible to infer similarly variable abduction gestures for /p t/ (probably more difficult; interarticulator coordination).

• VOT in development is not only about the timing of abduction.

3 more aerodynamic studies

1) Aerodynamic control in voiced stops2) Laryngeal and supralaryngeal coordination in fricatives (including /h/); assessment of variability3) Laryngeal coarticulation (following Löfqvist et al., 1995)

Methods for the 3 studies

• 10 children 4–5, 9–10 years; 10 women• /h s z p b/ in VCV contexts; 25-30 repetitions each

Cute picture with kids

3 more aerodynamic studies1) Aerodynamic control in voiced stops• Laryngeal coarticulation (following

Löfqvist et al., 1995 and Nittrouer et al., 1989)

• Laryngeal and supralaryngeal coordination in fricatives (including /h/)

• Recall: Kewley-Port & Preston: [b d g] appear later because of aerodynamic complications

Stop consonant voicing as “hard”

• Closing the upper vocal tract => intraoral pressure (Pio) builds up.

• Maintaining phonation requires a translaryngeal pressure drop across the vocal folds

• Adults perform compensatory maneuvers that slow Pio buildup; allow voicing to persist

• Obstruent devoicing is “phonetically natural”

Even harder in kids• Compared to adults, children have– Small supraglottal cavities– Vocal fold characteristics (stiffness, thickness,

damping) that probably require higher transglottal pressures for phonation (cf. modeling work of Lucero & Koenig, 2005)

• Past studies inferred that children have limited aerodynamic control in service of voicing, but no direct data comparing Pio and voicing in children.

Measuring Pio: Müller & Brown (1980)

• Measures of voicing and Pio in men AND

• Aerodynamic modeling• Shape of Pio contour: Slow-rising

contours as evidence of aerodynamic control (compensatory maneuvers)

Intraoral pressure signals: Papa Bopper

acoustics

flow

pressure p b p

The d measure (Müller & Brown, 1980)

d > 0: fast-rising (like /p/) d < 0: slow-rising (like /b/)

Results: VoicingAbsolute: C * Age NS Age x C

p=.07Percent: C * Age NS Age x C *

Koenig & Lucero, 2008

b p

•Some evidence that voicing distinctions are less pronounced 5-year-olds than adults, as predicted from past work.

Koenig & Lucero, 2008

b p

Results: d C: * Age: p=.02 Age x C:

p=.09

bp•Some evidence

that adults show greater aero-dynamic differentiation than children.

b

Koenig & Lucero, 2008

b p

Results: Pio differences related to voicing

b p

•Adults: All correlations significant and in expected direction.•Children less often significant, with some trends in the wrong direction. Clearer aerodynamic differen-tiation in adults.

Implications

•As predicted by Kewley-Port & Preston, and expected based on anatomical considerations, children do show less evidence of aerodynamic control of stop voicing than adults. In some cases, maybe even at 10 years of age.

3 more aerodynamic studies• Aerodynamic control in voiced stops2) Laryngeal and supralaryngeal coordination in fricatives (including /h/); assess variability• Laryngeal coarticulation (following

Löfqvist et al., 1995)

• High variability in development noted at least as early as 1969 (Eguchi & Hirsh).

Fricative development and production

• Sibilants often considered “difficult” : late/variable in acquisition, frequently affected by residual speech-sound disorders, susceptible in motor speech disorders, etc.

• Compare– /h/: VF abduction only– /z/: Tongue-tip constriction, min. abduction– /s/: VF abduction + TT constriction

/h/ and /s/ again•/h/: VF abduction

•/s/: abduction + tongue tip constriction

•measure VCV interval

Koenig, Lucero, & Perlman, 2008

Functional Data Analysis• Time-warp individual productions

signals to bring peaks/valleys into better alignment

• Extent of warping required yields measure of temporal (or phasing) variability

• Remaining variability in aligned signals: Amplitude variability with timing factored out

FDAoriginal /h/s

vertically align

time-align (warp)

resulting average

warping functions

amp. variab.

warping SD

amp. SD

Koenig, Lucero, & Perlman, 2008

Final FDA Output• Average signals, ±1 SD• Average warping and amplitude

variability indices (one number per C)

Indices: Group averages

Age * C * Age x C NS Age * C NS Age x C NS

s

hz

s

hz

Koenig, Lucero, & Perlman, 2008

Indices: Individual data

Koenig, Lucero, & Perlman, 2008

Indices: Individual data

Sum: Articulatory specificity•Variability is comparable across consonants in some speakers...•But in others (adults as well as children) variability may be higher in the larynx OR the tongue tip. •“Difficulty” of /s/ is not all about lingual control: there’s also an issue of aerodynamic control.•Speaker-specific patterns of variability: Not just “noise in the system”

Individual variability patterns

5yr

Ad.

h s z ≅ ≅

Koenig, Lucero, & Perlman, 2008

Individual variability patterns

5yr

10yr

s,z>h

Koenig, Lucero, & Perlman, 2008

Individual variability patterns

10yr

5yr

h,s>z

Koenig, Lucero, & Perlman, 2008

Sum: Time and amp. variability•Control of amplitude (gestural magnitude) appears to mature earlier, in general, than temporal phasing.•cf (?) Ferguson and Farwell’s (1975) account of phonological variability in very young children:

–Ways to say ‘pen’: [pʰɪn buã hɪn dɛdṇ mbõ]

•But Anders and colleagues find something different for lip data.

3 more aerodynamic studies• Aerodynamic control in voiced stops• Laryngeal and supralaryngeal

coordination in fricatives (including /h/)

• Laryngeal coarticulation (following Löfqvist et al., 1995 and Nittrouer et al., 1989)

Coarticulation in development

• Do children coarticulate “more” than adults?

• Yes: Nittrouer et al. (1989); theoretical work by Studdert-Kennedy (1981)

• No: (Kuipers, 1993; Smith et al., 1996)

• All past studies evaluated supraglottal articulators

DC flow: One adult

/h//p/

/b/

Koenig (2004)

Similar to

Löfqvist, Koenig & McGowan (1995)

Adults vs. children

Implications•Coarticulation, like everything else in development, is variable.•NB, current data assessed carryover coarticulation. Anticipatory more widely studied.•May need to temper claims about what coarticulation can tell us about overall articulatory organization.

Where does this leave us?• Physiological (non-acoustic) methods are

useful: Haskins tradition.• Development lasts a long time: Studies of 10

year olds can be informative.• What is the meaning of variability? – It complicates statements of adult-child

differences– It’s everywhere, but it’s not entirely

unpatterned.– Pathological noise vs. noise in typical

development?

Work supported by NIH grants DC–00865 and DC–04473–03

ReferencesKewley-Port, D., & Preston, M. (1974). Early apical stop production: A voice onset time analysis.

Journal of Phonetics, 2, 195–210.Koenig, L. L. (1998). An aerodynamic study of consonantal voicing control in normal men, women, and

5-year-olds. Unpublished doctoral dissertation, CUNY Graduate School and University Center.Koenig, L. L. (2000). Laryngeal factors in voiceless consonant production in men, women, and 5-year-

olds. Journal of Speech, Language, and Hearing Research, 43, 1211–1228.Koenig, L. L., & Lucero, J. C. (2008). Stop consonant voicing and intraoral pressure contours in women

and children. Journal of the Acoustical Society of America, 123, 1077–1088.Koenig, L. L., Lucero, J. C., and Perlman, E. (2008). Speech production variability in fricatives of

children and adults: Results of Functional Data Analysis. Journal of the Acoustical Society of America, 124.

Koenig, L. L. (2005). The development of laryngeal coarticulation: Comparison of women, 5-year-olds, and 10-year-olds. Journal of the Acoustical Society of America, 117, 2573.

Lisker, L., & Abramson, A. S. (1964). A cross-language study of voicing in initial stops: Acoustical measurements. Word, 20, 384–422.

Lisker, L., Abramson, A. S., Cooper, F. S., & Schvey, M. H. (1969). Transillumination of the larynx in running speech. Journal of the Acoustical Society of America, 45, 1544–1546.

Löfqvist, A. (1992). Acoustic and aerodynamic effects of interarticulator timing in voiceless consonants. Language and Speech, 35, 15–28.

Löfqvist, A., Koenig, L. L., & McGowan, R. S. (1995). Vocal tract aerodynamics in /aCa/ utterances: Measurements. Speech Communication, 16, 49–66.

Müller, E. M., & Brown, W. S. (1980). Variations in the supraglottal air pressure waveform and their articulatory interpretation. In N. Lass (Ed.), Speech and Language: Advances in Basic Research and Practice (Vol. 4, pp. 318–389). Madison: Academic Press, Inc.

Nittrouer, S., Studdert-Kennedy, M., & McGowan, R. S. (1989). The emergence of phonetic segments: Evidence from the spectral structure of fricative-vowel syllables spoken by children and adults. Journal of Speech and Hearing Research, 32, 120–132.

Preston, M. S., Yeni-Komshian, G., Stark, R. E., & Port, D. K. (1968). Developmental studies of voicing in stops. Haskins SR, 13/14, 181–184.