EPG-Based Research On Co-Articulation In Standard Mongolian In China

By using devices including EPG (ElectroPalatoGraph, Model 6300), Multi-Speech 3700 of KAY Corp and Mini-SpeechLab of Nankai University and applying acoustic & physiological analysis approaches, this paper implements systematic quantitative and qualitative analysis of articulating characteristics of vowels and consonants, tongue movement space, constraints and co-articulation of consonants in the word initial, median and final position, characteristics and co-articulation of consonants combination in standard Mongolian words.This paper consists of seven chapters and references & appendix. The seven chapters are as followings:Preface, Articulation Characteristics Of Mongolian Vowels And Consonants, Tongue Movement Space, Constraints And Co-Articulation Of Consonants In The Word Initial Position, Tongue Movement Space, Constraints And Co-Articulation Of Consonants In The Word Median Position, Tongue Movement Space, Constraints And Co-Articulation Of Consonants In The Word Final Position, Characteristics And Co-Articulation Of Mongolian Consonants Combination, Experiment Results & Discussion. In the first chapter (Preface), goal & importance, foundation, contents and approaches of research are illustrated. The second chapter proposes pattern of Mongolian consonants based on careful acoustic and physiological analysis of Mongolian vowels and consonants. In the third, fourth and fifth chapter, tongue movement space, constraints and co-articulation of consonants in the word initial, median and final position are explored. The sixth chapter presents characteristics and co-articulation of consonants combination. Experiments results and conclusions are summarized in the seventh chapter.The experiments results demonstrate that Mongolian consonants in different position have different tongue movement space. In the word-initial position, consonants have least movement space and dispersion and most concentrated allophones; next is consonants in the word-final position; consonants in word-median position have largest movement space and dispersion and most scattered allophones. Mongolian Consonant tongue horizontal movement space is constrained by constriction position and is in conformity with the rule that front consonant leads to smaller tongue movement space; higher consonant leads to smaller tongue vertical movement space. Generally speaking, consonants'tongue vertical variation scope is bigger than tongue horizontal variation scope. Adjacent segments have strong co-articulation effect. Except for individual consonants, co-articulation of separated (non-adjacent) segments is not evident. Co-articulation of back segment on forward segment is stronger than that of forward segment on back segment.