Monitoring Soft Palate Movements in Speech

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Abstract
A simple photoelectric device has been constructed which permits easy monitoring of soft palate movements in speech. Since its output signal cannot easily be calibrated it is most useful for detecting the timing of such movements and the relative rather than the absolute amount of velopharyngeal opening. Using it, it has been possible to verify others' findings that: (l) The soft palate is lowered more during vowels preceding a nasal consonant than it is during vowels following a nasal consonant. (2) The soft palate begins to lower for an upcoming nasal consonant as soon as it can, i.e., as soon as it is no longer required to be closed for an obstruent. (3) Other things being equal, the soft palate is typically lowered during the production of so- called low "oral" vowels such as (). (Supported by the National Science Foundation.) 444h333 Most of the popular methods used by speech researchers to monitor the movements of the soft palate in speech, for example cinefluorography, although quite exact, necessitate a huge amount of labor (and a certain amount of danger) for the analysis of relatively short bits of speech. And there is no way of knowing in advance, before laboring over the data, whether or not the sample will prove interesting or not. There is a need, then, for a simple technique for measuring palatal movements—a technique whereby rough-cut data may be gathered quickly in great volume so that a preliminary analysis may indicate which speech gestures may be more profitably studied in more detail using, perhaps, cinefluorography. The technique described in this paper meets this need to a certain extent. It monitors movements of the soft palate in the same way as a glottograph monitors variations in glottal area: a DC light is placed on one side of the opening and a light sensor on the other side (Sonesson 1959, Ohala 1966). The amount of light impinging on the light sensor and thus the voltage developed by it are taken as an indication of the size of the opening.

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