10.7291/XA9S-AQ58
Bennett, Ryan
McGuire, Grant
Ní Chiosáin, Máire
Padgett, Jaye
Ultrasound Investigation of Irish Palatalization (Phase 1, Connacht dialect)
UC Santa Cruz
2015
Irish
ultrasound
Connemara Irish
Connacht
linguistics
palatalization
velarization
phonetics
phonology
2015-08-04T12:12:58+00:00
Collection
http://humweb.ucsc.edu/jayepadgett/wp/conamara
4424249688
Creative Commons Attribution 4.0 International (CC BY 4.0)
This dataset documents the production of palatalized and velarized
consonants in Connemara Irish gathered in 2010 using a portable ultrasound
device. Ultrasound imaging provides direct information about tongue body
shape and movement, crucial to an understanding of palatalization and
velarization. We also recorded video of lip movement, and audio,
simultaneously with the ultrasound video. The shape of the tongue body,
and of the lips, were extracted from video and averaged by statistical
means. This dataset is part of a larger project that documents the
articulatory and acoustic properties of palatalization in the three major
dialects of Irish (Connacht, Munster, and Ulster); material in this
dataset comes from the Connacht dialect (Connemara Irish). This data is
useful for researchers studying the effects on the palatalization contrast
of consonant identity, vowel context, etc., as well as speaker strategies
for maintaining contrast and coordinating gestures. In addition, learners
and teachers of Irish can use this data for guidance on how to produce the
Irish contrast between palatalized (slender) and velarized (broad)
consonants.
Ultrasound data was collected using a Terason T3000 ultrasound system with
a model 8MC3 probe. The ultrasound machine recorded video at a rate of 57
frames per second, giving one new image roughly every 17.5ms. The probe
was mounted in an Articulate Instruments Ultrasound Stabilization Headset,
which was worn by the speakers throughout the experiment. (See Scobbie et
al. 2008 for validation of this headset for probe stabilization.) Acoustic
data was collected simultaneously using a Shure WH20 dynamic cardioid
microphone attached to the headset, recording directly to the ultrasound
system (which includes a laptop computer; 48,000 kHz sampling rate, 16 bit
depth, mono, .WAV format). Each recording session lasted about one hour.
Recordings were made in a quiet room in Sept. 2010.
For further details, see: Bennett, Ryan, Grant McGuire, Máire Ní Chiosáin
& Jaye Padgett (2014). An ultrasound study of Connemara Irish
palatalization and velarization. Ms., UC Santa Cruz, University College
Dublin, and Yale University. Available at
<http://humweb.ucsc.edu/jayepadgett/wp/wp-content/uploads/2014/02/Conamara_paper.pdf>.
Data were created with funding from the National Science Foundation,
Division of Behavioral and Cognitive Sciences under grant 1424398.