Using Optical Flow Analysis on Ultrasound of the Tongue to Examine Phonological Relationships

Abstract

This paper examines whether there are articulatory correlates of differing degrees of phonological contrast. English tense vowels are found to be produced with greater average magnitudes of movement when they occur in closed syllables, where they are generally contrastive with their lax vowel counterparts, than when they occur in open syllables, where they are less contrastive. Magnitude of tongue movement was determined by optical flow analysis of ultrasound videos of tongue movements; optical flow analysis allows for direct comparison of results across speakers and for the extraction of data from the entire timecourse of productions.