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YflK 81.342.2(1.571-81)
INNOVATIVE TECHNOLOGIES IN THE STUDY OF ARTICULATORY-ACOUSTIC BASES OF INDIGENOUS ETHNOSES OF SIBERIA: MRI, DIGITAL RADIOGRAPHY AND LARYNGOGRAPHY
Iraida Yakovlevna SELYUTINA1, Tatyana Raisovna RYZHIKOVA1, Nikolay Sergeevich URTEGESHEV1, Albina Albertovna DOBRININA1, Andrey Ivanovich SHEVELA2, Andrey Yur'evich LETYAGIN3
1 Institute ofPhilology of SB RAS 630090, Novosibirsk, Nikolaev str., 8
2 Institute of Chemical Biology and Fundamental Medicine of SB RAS 630090, Novosibirsk, Lavrent'ev str., 8
3 Institute of Physiology and Fundamental Medicine 630117, Novosibirsk, Timakov str., 8
The study of the sound systems of the minority languages of the peoples of Siberia and the adjacent regions is based on the supposition that the articulatory-acoustic database being an attribute of ethnicity is a potential historical and linguistic source in the reconstruction of ethno-genetic processes. Instrumental methods have been used by the Novosibirsk phoneticians in the study of sound systems since the late 1960s. Since 2009, researchers from the three institutes of the Siberian branch of the Russian Academy of Sciences both of a philological and medical profile have been conducting a comprehensive interdisciplinary study of articulatory-acoustic bases of indigenous Siberian populations, using magnetic-resonance imaging, digital radiography and laryngography. An electronic database including somatic material on 46 idioms (languages, dialects and sub-dialects) has been created. The results of the study made adjustments to the traditional view of scientists about the Genesis of the autochthonous minority ethnic groups and their languages.
Keywords: languages of Siberian peoples, phonology, instrumental-phonetic methods, magnetic-resonance imaging, digital radiography, laryngography.
Phonology as a science considering speech sounds from the point of view of their distinctive functions originated in Russia. Its founder is a Russian scientist of a Polish origin I.A. Baudouin de Courtenay (1845-1929). He developed a theory of phonemes [1] and was the first to apply mathematical models to linguistics and to lay foundations to a new direction in linguistics - the experimental phonetics.
Instrumental methods in the study of the sound systems of the world languages have been used in linguistics since the mid-nineteenth century. But the active use of hardware methods in phonetic re-
searches have begun in the 1950s, when it became clear that it was necessary to utilize objective data eliminating a subjectivity factor inherent to an auditory phonetics. The researchers perceive a new language through the prism of phonetic and phonological systems of their native language and other languages known to them, because even the most sophisticated ear hears what it is used to hear. For this reason, the descriptions of sound systems of unstudied languages of Siberia, made in the XIX-XX centuries on the auditory level, has been influenced by both the traditions of Indoeuropean and Russian studies. Further development of phonetics was im-
Selyutina I. Y. - doctor of philological sciences, professor, chief researcher, e-mail: [email protected] Ryzhikova T. R. - candidate of philological sciences, senior researcher, e-mal: [email protected] Urtegeshen N. S. - candidate of philological sciences, researcher, e-mal: [email protected] Dobrinina A. A. - candidate of philological sciences, researcher, e-mail: [email protected] Shevela A. Yu. - doctor of medical sciences, professor, deputy director, e-mail: [email protected] Letyagin A. I. - doctor of medical sciences, professor, deputy director, e-mail: [email protected]
possible without the use of objective methods ensuring the adequacy of a recorded and interpreted linguistic material.
In Novosibirsk experimental phonetic study of the languages of the peoples of Siberia, the Russian North and Far East has started in the late 1960s under the leadership of V.M. Nadelyaev, who established the laboratory of experimental-phonetic researches at the former Institute of History, Philology and Philosophy, Siberian Branch of the USSR Academy of Sciences (since 1990 - the Institute of Philology, Siberian Branch of the Russian Academy of Sciences).
Frontal experimental phonetic study of the languages of Siberia and the adjacent regions is carried out for the first time both in Russia and abroad. In line with the common theoretical concepts and methodological framework established by the founder of LEPR, various aspects of the sound systems of about 50 languages, dialects and subdialects -Turkic, Mongolian, Tungus-Manchu, Samoyedic, Ob-Ugric, Yenisei and Paleoasiatic have been and are being examined. The results have been published in fifty books and more than 700 articles in various scientific journals and collections.
MATERIALS AND METHODS
A complex procedure used by the Siberian phoneticians includes both the linguistic methods of phonological analysis, and hardware methods of static radiography, dental-palatography, labiography, lin-guography, spectrography, pneumo-oscillography, as well as computer programs for sound files creating and processing.
At the beginning of XXI century, with the development of innovative technologies, the instrumental studies of the sound systems are conducted in the majority of the leading world laboratories by using the latest techniques of magnetic-resonance imaging (MRI), digital radiography (DRG), laryn-gography (DLG), electromiography, etc. The English language is examined in the USA in Haskins Laboratories at the Yale University, Connecticut, at the Universities of Brown, Southern California, French in Grenoble, Japanese in Tokyo, the Korean language in Seoul. In Russia such studies are carried out on the material of the Russian language in the center of the magnetic-resonance imaging and spec-trography of the Moscow State University.
In Siberia, to foster the research of the endangered minority languages at the current level was made possible thanks to the financial support of the Presidium of SB RAS within the fundamental interdisciplinary studies. Since 2009, researchers from the three institutions of SB RAS - the Institute of
Philology, the International Tomography Center (ITC) and the Institute of Chemical Biology and Fundamental Medicine have carried out a comprehensive multidisciplinary investigation of articula-tory settings peculiar to the speakers of the endangered Siberian languages.
An innovative paradigm for the study of speech sounds has been developed. Scientists of ITC and ACBFM have done the necessary work for medical programs adaptation of MRI, DRG and DLG in agreement with the goals and objectives of an experimental phonetic research-data acquisition, processing, analysis and interpretation.
Tomographic studies were conducted in ITC on high field MRI Philips Achieva Nova Dual 1.5 T tomograph (Philips medical systems; Eindhoven, Netherlands). Graphical post-processing, archiving and morphometry of MRI was performed on a workstation Philips ViewForum RS.1 (Dell). T2-weighed images (T2W TSE SENSE) in three projections with parameters: FOV - 250 mm, FOV reduction - 90 %, Reconstruction 256 x 256, Scan% - 80, Slice thickness 6 mm, Flip angle = 90, TR/TE = = 1000/80.0 were obtained.
Digital radiography was performed in the Center of New Medical Technologies of ACBFM on a low-dose digital X-ray installation «Siberia-N» (produced by the Institute of Nuclear Physics SB RAS). Shooting of the vocal apparatus of each of the speakers was carried out in a lateral projection in the sitting position at the moment of pronouncing certain phonetic stimulus in accordance with a predesigned program of the experiment. The range of study is from VI cervical vertebra to the upper edge of the orbit.
When performing direct digital laryngoscopy, two devices with the smallest diameter of fiberoptic and superior imaging capacity: Pentax Broncho-scope FB-18V (Japan) and the Bronchofiberscope OLYMPUS BF-S (Japan) were used for visual control of the experiment and subsequent documentation of the received data, a video device EVIS EX-ERA II Video System Center Olympus CV-180 is used with parallel recording to a video file utilizing AVER Media software. The communication channel of the bronchoscope is connected to the computer. During the research IT specialist performs the digital recording of the process of articulation and provides parallel broadcast of a live video from the bronchoscope on the monitor screen.
For the first time in Russian and foreign linguistics an electronic database was formed including an experimental phonetic somatic material of a unique scientific value, collected in 46 languages and dialects of autochthonous minority ethnic groups. Highresolution MRI scans, digital X-ray images and la-
ryngograms showing articulatory settings of vocal and consonant components of speech were received from 110 informants.
RESULTS AND DISCUSSION
The study of the sound systems of the minority languages of the peoples of Siberia and adjacent regions, performed by the phoneticians of Siberia is based on a supposition proposed by V.M. Nade-lyaev in 1980s that the articulatory-acoustic base (AAB) as an attribute of ethnicity is a potential historical and linguistic source in the reconstruction of ethno-genetic processes. AAB theory is especially valuable in the study of the history of the peoples of Siberia, who did not leave written documents. AAB as a system of pronunciation skills and related with them acoustic effects is formed at an early stage of an ethnic group genesis and passes from generation to generation saving its essential features provided the ethnic groups preserve their compact place of living in the process of population transformations.
The results of the complex experimental phonetic data analysis, providing a high level visualization of vocal and consonant articulatory processes in the Turkic, Mongolian, Tungus-Manchu and Finno-Ugric languages, allowed the scientists to make corrections in the traditional notions of the phonetic areals of Siberia, about the Genesis of ethnic groups and their languages, about their intersections.
The Turkic languages
The presence on the territory of Siberia of Turkic languages, vocal (Fig. 1-3) and consonant systems of which is structured by the parameters of the larynx movement, regularities of a developed pharyngeal sinharmonism revealed in the Tuvan language and the obligatory pharyngealization of the Russian borrowings by the Tuvinians - all these factors prove the necessity of revising the existing in Turkology point of view that pharyngealization is a disappearing phenomenon, a relict and witness the
I ( ) M\
M> r
Fig. 1. X-ray images of the Tuvan vowel sounds: a) non-phayingealized /i:/ in the word-form shii 'the perfomance'; b) pharyngealized /i'/ in the word-form irt 'the castrated sheep'
Fig. 2. Laryngograms of the Tuvan vowel sounds: a) non-pharyngealized /i:/ in the word-form shii 'the perfomance'; b) pharyngealized /i'/ in the word-form irt 'the castrated sheep'
importance of pharyngo-laryngeal part of a vocal tract for specifying Siberian peoples' AABs and phonological systems of their languages.
The articulatory specificity of the pharyngeal-ized vocal settings is a strong tension of the speech apparatus, the tongue root movement to the back wall of the pharynx and, as a consequence, reduction of a laryngeal-pharyngeal part of the resonator (Fig. 1b), a tight approximation of the vocal cords (Fig. 2b) in comparison with non-pharyngealized vowels (Fig. 1a, 2a). On the waveform, pharyn-gealization is marked by dramatic falling - smooth falling ~ discontinuous - dramatic rising of the pitch (Fig. 3b) in contrast to the smooth rising pitch when articulating non-pharyngealized vowels (Fig. 3a).
Fig. 3. Waveforms and pitch movements in the Tuvan vowel sounds: a) non-pharyngealized /i:/ in the word-form diis 'a cat'; b) pharyngealized/i:/in the word-form di's 'onomatopoeia'
In Tuvan, consonant phonemes oppose as strong/ week/super-week. The peculiarity of the Tuvan phonetics is that not only vowels but consonants as well are pharyngealized in the pharyngealized word-forms. Glottalization of vowels is a phonemic feature, glottalization of consonants is an allophonic one. Choice of the consonant representant in a mono-thematic word-forms depends - in full correspondence with Tuvan pharyngeal synharmony - on the quality of a vowel in the first syllable of a stem [2, 6].
Thus, the results of instrumental researches witness the presence of certain correlations between the degree of tenseness and pharyngealization as an additional work of throat walls with the acoustic effect of low resonance when pronouncing pharyngealized consonants. Noteworthy that functional status of pharyngealized consonants in the Southern-Siberian Turkic languages, i.e. pharyngealization of consonants, is a systematizing distinctive feature in Shor and Baraba-Tartars' and allophonic one in Tuvan [10, 13].
The Mongolian languages
Though having a relative proximity, dating back to the period of an original unity in the Circum-Baikal region, the principles of a structural-taxono-mical organization of the consonant systems of the Mongolian languages are typologically different. If in the Khalkha Mongolian (Fig. 4) and Kalmyk languages the consonantism is structured by a triple opposition of tension, revealing the similarity with the South Siberian Turkic languages (Tuvan, Tofa) of the Sayan-Baikal ethnoareal, than a Hori Buryat system with binary opposition of weak and super-weak consonant phonemes is close to the Altai-Sayan Turkic (Altai, Khakas) and Ural languages for which strong tensed articulation is unacceptable.
A triple opposition of the units by the mode of occlusion is linguistically significant for the Buryat consonantism-phonemes are opposed as stops, fricatives and vibrants. The affricates are absent in the Buryat language, this fact making it stand out
among other Mongolian languages, in which complex occlusive consonants are the productive elements of the system.
According to the MRI and DRG data in the phonetic system of Khalkha Mongols, the palatalization (both phonologically moderate and allo-phonically weak) is accompanied by the forward advancement of the tongue body (more forward at a moderate palatalization). It results in a volumetric back mouth-pharyngeal resonator and simultaneously the area of the contact (with stops) or convergence (with fricatives) of active and passive organs of speech increases. This proves the specificity of the Khalkhas AAB in comparison with the languages of Siberia and adjacent regions, where palatalization is achieved primarily by the additional rise of the front-middle part of the tongue dorsum to the hard palate.
Such significant differences in genetically related languages are caused by different historical development of the ethnic groups, their interactions and mutual influences that resulted in the specifics of the articulatory-acoustic bases of the native speakers of the modern Mongolian languages.
The Tungus-Manchu languages
A comprehensive analysis of instrumental data on the Tungus-Manchu phonetics on the example of the Evenk language showed that the specifics of the Evenk language AAB is determined by more forward localization of the articulatory settings of consonants than in the majority of the surveyed languages of Siberia. The labial, forelingual and fore-lingual-mediolingual articulations (14 units) prevail, the class of guttural phonemes is represented only by 4 phonemes while no classical uvular realizations have been fixed in the system. The total palatalization of consonant settings when the tongue body moves up-forward thus increasing the volume of the back-oral-pharyngeal part of the resonator and causing the acoustic effect of softness, as well as the absence of velarized, uvularized and nazal-
a b с d
Fig. 4. MRI image (a, c) and scheme (b, d) of the Khalkha Mongolian strong sound /t/ in the word-form hat 'a hardening of a steel' (a, b) and week sound /d/ in the word-form had 'a rock' (c, d)
a b с d
Fig. 5. MRI image (a, c) and scheme (b, d) of the Evenk moderately palatalized sound /p/ in the word-form chepi 'to drown' (a, b) and weakly palatalized sound /t/ in the word-form amut 'the lake' (c, d)
ized articulations, which seem to be rather productive in the languages of Siberia, also indicate that the movement of the sound producing organs forward is the predominant characteristic of the articulation base of the Evenks (Fig. 5).
For AAB of Selemdzhi Evenks strong tension is unusual: the phoneme manifestations of both noisy and less-noisy consonants are defined as moderately tensed (except labial consonants). Thus, the Evenk language is typologically similar to the Ugro-Samo-yedic languages, the Buryat language - one of the languages of the Mongolian family and the Turkic languages of the Altai-Baikal region, which had been formed as a result of turkization of the Ugro-Samoyedic population with unacceptable for them strong articulation. It is this feature that typologi-cally contrasts to the consonant systems of such languages of the Ural-Altaic community as Khalkha Mongolian, Kalmyk, South Siberian Turkic languages of the Sayan-Baikal region (Tuvan, Tofa, Shor, Baraba Tatar).
A specific feature of the Evenk consonantism in its Selemdzhi variant is that stop consonants (11 units) prevail over the fricative ones (4 units) and it makes the Selemdzhi dialect similar to Yakut - one of the contact Turkic languages.
The presence in the system of the pharyngeal sound h approximates the Evenk consonantism with Buryat, which includes a similar component but having a phonological status. The Mongolists interpret the consonant h as one of the elements of the Evenk phonetic substrate in the Buryat language, which has resulted from the long interaction between the Evenk and Mongolian ethnic groups on the Circum-Baikal territory.
The Ob-Ugric languages
The obtained instrumental data show a high productivity of the laryngeal-pharyngeal part of the vocal apparatus in Khanty - it is fixed not only on auditive-visual level, but also on the MR-images, radiograms and laryngograms.
There is a high frequency localization of the forelingual obstacle of the consonants on the hard palate, and not on the teeth and alveolas as in the Siberian Turkic and Mongolian languages. This feature is most clearly realized in the Surgut dialect. These characteristics of the settings indicate that in the Khanty language forelingual consonant articulations move backward.
Forelingual articulations in the Khanty language are usually apical or cacuminal (Fig. 6) but not dor-
a b с d
Fig. 6. MRI image (a, c) and scheme (b, d) of the Khanty sound /[/ in the word-form hash 'the willow' (a, b) and sound /k/ in the word-form sak 'the beads' (c, d)
sal, as in the majority of the Siberian Turkic and Mongolian languages; dorsality is not, in fact, fixed.
At the same time, the guttural consonants - in preposition to front-raw and back-raw vowels significantly move forward, being realized in mediolingual manifestations. In the Kazym dialect, the uvula settings are revealed neither by X-ray no by MRI.
Experimentally recorded shifts of the Khanty articulations to the center of the oral cavity - the fore-lingual consonants move backward and guttural settings, on the contrary, move forward, being realized in mediolingual variants, - are similar to the previously identified processes in some vocal systems of the South Siberian Turkic languages, for which an Ugro-Samoyedic substrate is assumed [3, 11].
Further studies using both linguistic and objective experimental-phonetic methods will allow us to determine the specificity of AAB of the ethnic groups of Khanty, the role of laryngeal-pharyngeal part of the resonator in the formation of the vocal and consonant articulations, the functions of ejec-tive and injective settings in phonic and phonological systems. The reasons for the differences should be sought in the historical past of the native speakers of the investigated dialects.
CONCLUSION AND FUTURE WORK
One of the most urgent and priority tasks of modern phonetics is the problem of separation, analysis and identification of speech segments to construct the correlation matrix, in which the variables are articulatory and acoustic parameters of speech sounds. Linguists developed a universal unified classification model of speech sounds in languages of the world, based on the data of the anatomical and physiological features of the vocal apparatus and which take into account both known to science articulatory sound settings and unexplored but theoretically possible articulations in languages [7-9, 12, 14].
Physicists have managed to work in detail an acoustic theory of speech formation [4, 5]. The question of the correlation of the articulatory phases with the corresponding acoustic effects, the problem of the correlation algorithms remain open. The complexity of the problem is in poly-variance of the acoustic signals corresponding to the same articula-tory structure. Further improvement of the methodology of integrated synchronous-commit segmentation of sound chains followed by a parallel study of the acoustic and anatomy-physiological components of speech can serve as a basis for constructing a correlation model.
The results obtained are of interest for linguists, teachers and physicians (linguodidactics, speech
therapy, neurological practice) and may be used in the automatic recognition and synthesis of speech, the development of computer speech databases, conversion text-to-speech. Innovative paradigm for the study of speech sounds will find application in studies of languages of other typologies, as well as in the solution of the problems of a hardware medicine.
ACKNOWLEDGMENTS
Interdisciplinary integration project № 121 (2012-2014) «The Comparative Investigations of Siberian Indigenous Peoples' Articulatory-acoustic Bases by the Methods of Magnetic-Resonance Imaging, Digital Roentgenography and Laryngoscopy» was financially supported by the Presidium of SB RAS. The authors appreciate the help of the project team members: A.A. Savelov, M.V. Rezako-va, E.A. Levshakova, Yu.A. Ganenko. We are also grateful to our subjects for their valuable contribution to the business of the minority languages preservation.
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УДК 81.342.2(1.571-81)
ИННОВАЦИОННЫЕ ТЕХНОЛОГИИ В ИЗУЧЕНИИ АРТИКУЛЯЦИОННО-АКУСТИЧЕСКИХ БАЗ КОРЕННЫХ ЭТНОСОВ СИБИРИ (ПО ДАННЫМ МРТ, ДИГИТАЛЬНОГО РЕНТГЕНОГРАФИРОВАНИИЯ И ЛАРИНГОГРАФИРОВАНИЯ)
Ираида Яковлевна СЕЛЮТИНА1, Татьяна Раисовна РЫЖИКОВА1, Николай Сергеевич УРТЕГЕШЕВ1, Альбина Альбертовна ДОБРИНИНА1, Андрей Иванович ШЕВЕЛА2, Андрей Юрьевич ЛЕТЯГИН3
1 Институт филологии СО РАН
630090, г. Новосибирск, ул. Академика Николаева, 8
2Институт химической биологии и фундаментальной медицины СО РАН 630090, г. Новосибирск, пр. Академика Лаврентьева, 8
3Институт физиологии и фундаментальной медицины 630117, г. Новосибирск, ул. Тимакова, 4
Исследования звуковых систем миноритарных языков народов Сибири и сопредельных регионов базируются на положении о том, что артикуляционно-акустическая база как атрибут этноса является потенциальным ис-торико-лингвистическим источником при реконструкции этногенетических процессов. Инструментальные методы используются новосибирскими фонетистами при изучении звуковых систем с конца 60-х гг. ХХ в. С 2009 г. ученые трех институтов Сибирского отделения Российской академии наук филологического и медицинского профиля проводят комплексное междисциплинарное исследование артикуляционно-акустических баз коренных популяций Сибири методами магнитно-резонансного томографирования, дигитального рентге-нографирования и ларингографирования. Сформирована электронная база данных, включающая соматический материал по 46 идиомам (языкам, диалектам и говорам). По результатам исследования внесены коррективы в традиционные представления учёных о генезисе автохтонных миноритарных этносов и их языков.
Ключевые слова: языки народов Сибири, фонология, методы инструментальной фонетики, магнитно-резонансная томография, цифровая рентгенография, ларингография.
Селютина И.Я. - д.ф.н., профессор, главный научный сотрудник, [email protected]
Уртегешев Н.С. - к.ф.н., старший научный сотрудник, [email protected]
Добринина А.А. - к.ф.н., научный сотрудник, [email protected]
Рыжикова Т.Р. - к.ф.н., доцент кафедры иностранных языков, [email protected]
Шевела А.И. - д.м.н., проф., зам. директора, [email protected]
Летягин А.Ю. - д.м.н., проф., зам. директора, [email protected]
