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Comparison of EMA and MARRYS : Jaw displacement in narrow vs broad focus

Frid, Johan LU orcid ; Erickson, Donna LU ; Lundmark, Malin Svensson LU orcid and Niebuhr, Oliver (2026) Speech Prosody 2026 p.103-107
Abstract
The focus of this study is threefold: (1) to examine how jaw displacement patterns vary with prosodic focus in American English, (2) to determine whether narrow focus induces greater jaw lowering than broad focus, and (3) to compare two different techniques for recording these jaw displacement patterns—Electromagnetic Articulography (EMA) and the new, innovative MARRYS helmet system. Simultaneous acoustic, EMA, and MARRYS recordings were made at the Lund University Humanities Lab, Sweden, for four American English speakers. The speakers were asked to produce multiple repetitions of two English sentences with broad focus and with narrow focus on four target words in each sentence. Concerning the jaw displacement patterns, the results show... (More)
The focus of this study is threefold: (1) to examine how jaw displacement patterns vary with prosodic focus in American English, (2) to determine whether narrow focus induces greater jaw lowering than broad focus, and (3) to compare two different techniques for recording these jaw displacement patterns—Electromagnetic Articulography (EMA) and the new, innovative MARRYS helmet system. Simultaneous acoustic, EMA, and MARRYS recordings were made at the Lund University Humanities Lab, Sweden, for four American English speakers. The speakers were asked to produce multiple repetitions of two English sentences with broad focus and with narrow focus on four target words in each sentence. Concerning the jaw displacement patterns, the results show that (1) jaw lowering is greater for words receiving focus in an utterance, and (2) narrow focus compared to broad focus has much greater jaw lowering. Comparison of EMA with MARRYS shows a high correlation between the two methods. The finding that the relatively low-cost, portable MARRYS system yields results comparable to EMA is encouraging for future studies of jaw displacement in spoken languages. (Less)
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author
; ; and
organization
publishing date
type
Chapter in Book/Report/Conference proceeding
publication status
published
subject
host publication
SpeechProsody 2026
pages
5 pages
conference name
Speech Prosody 2026
conference location
Philadelphia, United States
conference dates
2026-05-26 - 2026-05-29
DOI
10.21437/SpeechProsody.2026-21
project
Språkbanken (Swedish Language Bank)
language
English
LU publication?
yes
id
22fbb90a-9c46-4612-9590-79400ac8083b
date added to LUP
2026-06-18 11:29:40
date last changed
2026-07-03 07:51:06
@inproceedings{22fbb90a-9c46-4612-9590-79400ac8083b,
  abstract     = {{The focus of this study is threefold: (1) to examine how jaw displacement patterns vary with prosodic focus in American English, (2) to determine whether narrow focus induces greater jaw lowering than broad focus, and (3) to compare two different techniques for recording these jaw displacement patterns—Electromagnetic Articulography (EMA) and the new, innovative MARRYS helmet system. Simultaneous acoustic, EMA, and MARRYS recordings were made at the Lund University Humanities Lab, Sweden, for four American English speakers. The speakers were asked to produce multiple repetitions of two English sentences with broad focus and with narrow focus on four target words in each sentence. Concerning the jaw displacement patterns, the results show that (1) jaw lowering is greater for words receiving focus in an utterance, and (2) narrow focus compared to broad focus has much greater jaw lowering. Comparison of EMA with MARRYS shows a high correlation between the two methods. The finding that the relatively low-cost, portable MARRYS system yields results comparable to EMA is encouraging for future studies of jaw displacement in spoken languages.}},
  author       = {{Frid, Johan and Erickson, Donna and Lundmark, Malin Svensson and Niebuhr, Oliver}},
  booktitle    = {{SpeechProsody 2026}},
  language     = {{eng}},
  month        = {{05}},
  pages        = {{103--107}},
  title        = {{Comparison of EMA and MARRYS : Jaw displacement in narrow vs broad focus}},
  url          = {{http://dx.doi.org/10.21437/SpeechProsody.2026-21}},
  doi          = {{10.21437/SpeechProsody.2026-21}},
  year         = {{2026}},
}