The SBS Lab

In our lab, we are particularly interested in various kinds of speech behaviors across different body parts, including the larynx, the tongue, the lips, as well as the face. We use a number of equipment and techniques to examine and to understand the nature of speech sounds, how these sounds are produced, and the science behind them. Our lab uses imaging equipment, such as ultrasound to track movements, and we also have devices to record a wide range of electrical behaviors, including electromyography and electroglottography. The obtained speech signals and data can be further processed and analyzed through statistics. Analyzed data would be suitable for submission to pattern recognition and machine learning. Through these research, we hope to uncover both the psychological and physiological mechanisms that are employed during speech production and perception. These, we believe, would help us understand how language and speech performances can reflect human minds.

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People

Director

• Prof. Chenhao Chiu 邱振豪
• PhD in Linguistics,
  University of British Columbia,
  Vancouver, Canada
• Research Interests:
  • Acoustic & articulatory phonetics
  • Interaction between
    speech perception & production
  • Speech motor control
  • Computational modeling
  • Automated data analytics

Students

Sam Fisher 翁益寧
2nd-year PhD Ray Chen 陳博煒
3rd-year MA Benson Huang 黃柏瑄
3rd-year MA Willy Wang 王麒瑋
3rd-year MA Hess Huang 黃建誌
2nd-year MA

Alumni

Yin-Ching Chang 張殷綮
MA Shiori Taniguchi 谷口詩織
MA Patricia Yang 楊沛霖
MA Theodore Lai 賴景泓
MA

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Equipments

Sound Proof Recording Room US (Ultrasonography) EGG (Electroglottography) EMG (Electromyography)

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Research Projects

Acoustic-articulatory correspondences across different head angles

• Acoustics: Vowel spaces (F1-F2 measurements) across different head angles
• Articulation: tongue postures & centers across different head angles
• Speech motor control: the muscular control of tongue postures & head angles

Mandarin high vowel rounding

• Automated data analytics: lip postures extracted through automated data collection

Phonetic details in speech plan

• How musical training background affects speakers' production with respect to the duration and pitch of the target response? (Chiu, 2020)
• What are the physiological constraints associated with SAS-elicited response and how are they dissociated from pre-planned details?

Auditory perturbation

• How can speech plans be performed in feedforward control?
• How does feedback affect the execution of speech plans?

Taiwan Mandarin sound merger

• How tongue postures may contribute to such sound merging?
  • Nasal merging: Chiu and Lu (2021)
  • Sibilant merging: Chiu et al. (2020)

Secondary articulation in Horpa

• What is the mechanism of secondary articulation in vowels? (Chiu and Sun, 2020)

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Courses

GIL required courses

• Introduction to phonology (聲韻學)
• Linguistic fieldwork (語言學田野調查)

GIL elected courses

• Physiological bases and functions in speech production (語言產出運動的生理基礎)
• Speech perception and production (語言感知與產出)
• Speech motor control (語言動作控制)
• The use of ultrasound for linguistic research (語言學超音波研究)

GE courses

• Speech behaviors and speech sciences (發音、行為與科學)
• Uncovering languages (探索語言)

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Participant Recruitment

Please refer to this link (In Mandarin Chinese) for the participant recruitment of our latest experiments.

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Events

1. Ultrasound in Linguistics Workshop 2021 (In Mandarin Chinese)
   Full playlist of the workshop recording
2. Ultrafest XII (Planning)

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Resources

1. GetContours
2. DeepEdge
3. TRACTUS
4. Ultrasound Repository (Coming Soon)

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Contact Us

Please feel free to contact us via [email protected] if you need any futher information.