Brief description

Haskins ALOKA SSD-1000 system with a 3-5 MHz probe. The probe is placed below the chin, in the soft area surrounded by the jawbone. The ultrasound waves are reflected back as echo by air or bony mass. Ultrasound images are recorded on a VCR and then digitized.

Quick time movie: the bright line traces the surface of the tongue from its root (left) to its apex (right).

Click the Play button, next to the speaker icon, on the lower left corner of the screen. If the Play button is not visible, zoom in the page some more (e.g. press CTRL and then '+' in Windows)

The left panel shows an image of the tongue during the production of [i] (tongue tip on the right). The right panel shows the surface of the tongue (blue line) after the application of an edge extraction procedure designed by Khalil Iskarous.

Sample minimal pairs of words showing differences in tongue body retraction for phonemically identical vowels in a front (blue) and a back (red) context. The tongue tip is on the right.

Source: Benus, Stefan, A. Gafos. 2007. Articulatory characteristics of Hungarian transparent vowels. Journal of Phonetics 35 (3), 271-444.