13.2072, Sum: Ventriloquists & Labial Consonants
LINGUIST List
linguist at linguistlist.org
Mon Aug 12 16:24:51 UTC 2002
LINGUIST List: Vol-13-2072. Mon Aug 12 2002. ISSN: 1068-4875.
Subject: 13.2072, Sum: Ventriloquists & Labial Consonants
Moderators: Anthony Aristar, Wayne State U.<aristar at linguistlist.org>
Helen Dry, Eastern Michigan U. <hdry at linguistlist.org>
Reviews (reviews at linguistlist.org):
Simin Karimi, U. of Arizona
Terence Langendoen, U. of Arizona
Consulting Editor:
Andrew Carnie, U. of Arizona <carnie at linguistlist.org>
Editors (linguist at linguistlist.org):
Karen Milligan, WSU Naomi Ogasawara, EMU
James Yuells, EMU Marie Klopfenstein, WSU
Michael Appleby, EMU Heather Taylor, EMU
Ljuba Veselinova, Stockholm U. Richard John Harvey, EMU
Dina Kapetangianni, EMU Renee Galvis, WSU
Karolina Owczarzak, EMU Anita Wang, EMU
Software: John Remmers, E. Michigan U. <remmers at emunix.emich.edu>
Gayathri Sriram, E. Michigan U. <gayatri at linguistlist.org>
Zhenwei Chen, E. Michigan U. <zhenwei at linguistlist.org>
Home Page: http://linguistlist.org/
The LINGUIST List is funded by Eastern Michigan University, Wayne
State University, and donations from subscribers and publishers.
Editor for this issue: Marie Klopfenstein <marie at linguistlist.org>
=================================Directory=================================
1)
Date: Tue, 6 Aug 2002 19:33:42 -0400 (EDT)
From: "Carol L. Tenny" <tenny at linguist.org>
Subject: Ventriloquists and labial consonants
-------------------------------- Message 1 -------------------------------
Date: Tue, 6 Aug 2002 19:33:42 -0400 (EDT)
From: "Carol L. Tenny" <tenny at linguist.org>
Subject: Ventriloquists and labial consonants
Sum: Ventriloquists and labial consonants
Quite a few months ago I posted this question about ventriloquists and labial
consonants:
One of my students in my intro linguistics class asked today, as we were
finishing up phonetics, how ventriloquists make labial consonants without
moving their lips ???
I love my intro students, they ask such great questions.
Anybody have any idea?
Carol Tenny
Thanks to the many people who responded and apologies for the long hiatus
between posting the question and the answers.
The trick seems to be that they substitute other consonants for the labials.
Most people said they substituted the corresponding dentals, but some said
velar substitutions were possible. Various psychological techniques also
contribute to covering up the substitutions. I will post the answers I
received below, because they were delightful to read.
****************************************************************************
Two ways:
1. by really saying 'v'
2. by really saying 'd'--see:
http://www.kimn.net/vent.htm
(It's pretty far down the page.)
Lynne
Dr M Lynne Murphy
Lecturer in Linguistics
Acting Director, MA in Applied Linguistics
School of Cognitive and Computing Sciences
University of Sussex
Brighton BN1 9QH
UK
phone +44-(0)1273-678844
fax +44-(0)1273-671320
*****************************************************************************
Subject: diladial consonants...
From: Sheri Wells Jensen <swellsj at bgnet.bgsu.edu>
Carol,
When I was a kid, I had an LP made by a ventriloquist and his puppet about
how to become a ventriloquist. The idea was that, when you had a bilabial
sound, you should substitute a dental /t/ for /p/, /d/ for /b/ and /n/ for
/m/. He then had his puppet try these substitutions, gradually speeding
up
and (it seemed to me) friccating slightly. The faster he went, the easier
it was to ignore the slightly wrong sounds (since so much of the rrest
were
fine) No doubt the funny voice had something to do with the overall
effect
as well. I would have thought that velars would have been a better
choice,
but my (admittedly limited) practice seemed to say otherwise. come to
think of it, it really would be interesting to see some spectrgrams of
ventriloquists' consonants, maybe comparing beginners with more
experienced
ones.
Best,
Sheri
* * * * * * *
Visit BG-Peacenet Home Page at
http://personal.bgsu.edu/~swellsj/bg-peacenet/
* * * * * * *
Dr. Sheri Wells-Jensen
423 East Hall
(419) 372-8935
http://personal.bgsu.edu/~swellsj/
* * * * * * *
*****************************************************************************
Subject: ventriloquists
From: "Mike Maxwell" <maxwell at ldc.upenn.edu>
I hope you get some more knowledgeable answers than I can give you, but
just
in case, here goes--
My father-in-law is a ventriloquist. He tries to avoid labials where
possible. Where he can't, I think he sometimes substitutes a velar when
he
can get away with it, perhaps with a bit of lip approximation (but not
closure, so it's not quite as obvious). His rounded vowels are, it
appears
to me, less rounded than normal English rounded vowels. But I think the
main thing is to make the dummy the center of attraction when it's
talking,
which is probably one reason why ventriloquists' dummies have very large
mouths, and the ventriloquists are careful to make use of those large
mouths. And finally, I think that there's a very strong compulsion (at
least in our culture) to maintain eye contact with the 'person' who is
doing
the talking. So the audience is looking at the dummy, not the
ventriloquist, when the dummy is supposed to be talking.
Mike Maxwell
Linguistic Data Consortium
maxwell at ldc.upenn.edu
*****************************************************************************
Subject: Re: 13.256, Qs: Ventriloquists/Labial Consonants, Tense/Lax /i/
From: Daniel Currie Hall <danhall at chass.utoronto.ca>
Dear Dr. Tenny,
Last term, I contrived to satisfy my own curiosity about ventriloquism by
putting the question "How do ventriloquists make or simulate labial
consonants?" on a list of suggested topics for a research project in the
second-year undergraduate phonetics course I was teaching. One of the
students took up the suggestion; unfortunately, I handed back the paper
without keeping a copy for myself, so I can't give you the references, but
I can tell you what I remember of the content.
In English, at least, ventriloquists tend to use dental stops in place of
[p] and [b], thus squeezing the coronal/labial contrast into an
alveolar/dental one. I find that dentals do sound a bit like labials (and
have a lower F2 than alveolars), especially if the body of the tongue is
kept as low as possible.
For [m], the velar eng is sometimes used. This is an especially effective
strategy (in English) when the sound occurs in an onset: the listener
hears a segment that is clearly nasal, and not an [n], so if it's in the
onset of a well-formed English syllable, it must be an [m]. If the fake
labial consonants are produced fluently, then the listener's phonotactic
and lexical knowledge will work to the ventriloquist's advantage.
As for the fricatives [f] and [v], these sound reasonably good even with
very little constriction, so the lower lip doesn't really have to move to
produce them.
The most important tool of the ventriloquist, though, is misdirection. The
ventriloquist's dummy serves not only as a partner in a comic dialogue,
but also as something to draw the audience's attention away from the
ventriloquist's mouth. If the dummy's mouth and arms and eyebrows are all
moving in synchrony with the words, and the ventriloquist seems to be
reacting to the content of the speech, then the observer's mind interprets
the scene in the most obvious way: the dummy is the one speaking.
Ventriloquists typically reinforce the illusion of dialogue by giving
their dummies distinctive voices and speech mannerisms; in this context,
any auditory difference between the fake labial consonants and the real
ones can be subconsciously interpreted by the audience as part of the
difference between the dummy's voice and the ventriloquist's.
So it really is a great question, because the answer involves acoustic and
auditory phonetics, phonotactics, top-down processing, and psychology.
Best regards,
Daniel Hall
Department of Linguistics
University of Toronto
*****************************************************************************
Subject: Fwd: 13.256, Qs: Ventriloquists/Labial Consonants, Tense/Lax /i/]
From: "Kurt S. Godden" <kgodden at atl.lmco.com>
p.s. I think some ventriloquists actually do bilabials, but since their
mouths are nearly closed and the audience is usually looking at the
dummy, it's not terribly visible. Others, I think, just do maybe an
alveolar nasal and get away with it. After all, people often can't
tell. My youngest daughter used to say, with huge melodramatic
exaggeration when she was about 4, "Did you em-MA or en-NA?" when trying
to understand what spelling we told her for some word.
-Kurt Godden
Advanced Technology Labs
Lockheed Martin
Camden, NJ
*****************************************************************************
Subject: ventriloquists & labial consonants
From: "Luis Vicente" <goodtimes_badtimes at hotmail.com>
Dear Tenny:
Nice question. I can only tell you what I know from the two ventriloquists
I
used to see acting on TV during my child years: they did pronounce proper
labial sounds (i.e., putting their lips together and then separating
them),
but they had a couple of tricks. First, they never separated their lips
more
than a few milimeters, so it was difficult to tell what they were actually
doing. Second, both of them performed with a microphone, and used it to
hide
their mouths as much as possible.
Also, I guess that most of the people that go to these shows look at the
puppet rather than at the person behind it. Therefore, ventriloquists can
pronounce labial sounds without much people noticing that they are moving
their mouths.
I hope this helps. Congratulations to your class for such good questions.
Luis.
*****************************************************************************
From: Laurie Bauer <laurie.bauer at vuw.ac.nz>
Wrt ventriloquists -- they don't. Labials are replaced with velars
(both share the feature of gravity in the Jakobsonian system -- and
consider changes such as earlier English /x/ gives /f/ in words like
_enough_), hence stereotypes such as _a gottle of geer_ rather than
_a bottle of beer_. I suspect that they must make other alterations
to the vocal tract to enhance the labial-like sound, but I'm no
expert and just sit back amazed when it happens!
Laurie Bauer
Professor of Linguistics
School of Linguistics and Applied Language Studies
Victoria University of Wellington
PO Box 600
Wellington
New Zealand
Ph +64 4 472 1000 x 5619 or DDI +64 4 463 5619
Fax +64 4 463 5604
www http://www.vuw.ac.nz/lals
e-mail laurie.bauer at vuw.ac.nz
*****************************************************************************
Subject: ventriloquists and labial consonants
From: "A. Medina" <naosari at iname.com>
hello, this may be a crazy thought, but I think they pronounce something
similar to a labial consonant, I mean it may be a sound similar in
manner, and hearers think they are perceiving labial sounds where there
are not...In short, it is the context, which seems to play a role
here... we do not perceive physical sounds... but meaningful sounds...
Ana Aurora Medina Murillo
Universidad de Sonora
Hermosillo, Mexico
*****************************************************************************
Subject: ventriloquists and labial consonants
From: "Bruno Estigarribia Fioravanti" <brunilda at free.fr>
Hey, I'm sorry I don't have an answer to either question but I still want
to
congratulate you and encourage you to keep listening to your students!
Where do you
teach?
Ventriloquists: My guess is: it is widely known that the articulatory
descriptions
of phonemes and their allophones are only statistically valid
descriptions. In
general, people pronounce those sounds the way they are described.
Nevertheless, the
importance of compensating phenomena has been thoroughly studied and
stated mainly
for cases of physical impairment. I can see no reason except my own
ignorance and
lack of skill to believe that the particular acoustic configuration of
labials is
less amenable to articulatory variations than other sounds.
But of course, you know all that.
Cheers
Bruno Estigarribia Fioravanti
Université Paris V-René Descartes-Sorbonne
Département de Linguistique générale et appliquée
Laboratoire d'Etudes sur l'Acquisition et la Pathologie du Langage chez
l'Enfant
(LEAPLE)
*****************************************************************************
Subject: ventriloquists and labial consonants tense and lax i
From: "Peter T. Daniels" <grammatim at att.net>
What nice questions!
> Date: Tue, 29 Jan 2002 20:43:06 -0500 (EST)
> From: "Carol L. Tenny" <tenny at linguist.org>
> Subject: ventriloquists and labial consonants
>
>
> One of my students in my intro linguistics class asked today, as we were
> finishing up phonetics, how ventriloquists make labial consonants
without
> moving their lips ???
By misdirection. They write their patter to avoid labials; and if
they're unavoidable, they do something acoustically similar and context
takes care of it.
> I love my intro students, they ask such great questions.
>
> Anybody have any idea?
>
> Carol Tenny
>
*****************************************************************************
Subject: Labials
From: J3cube at aol.com
The usual instruction in the ventriloquism books is to "fake" the labials
with alveolars (dentals). Thus, /d/ for /b/, /t/ for /p/, /n/ for /m/ /
Try
it out in context. It works pretty well, especially with a "funny accent"
to
begin with.
James J. Jenkins
Psychology Dept and Speech and Hearing
University of South Florida
*****************************************************************************
Subject: Ventriloquism and labials.
From: "Allan C. Wechsler" <acw at alum.mit.edu>
I think I learned this from a how-to book, perhaps by Shari Lewis.
The labiodental fricatives are easy; they are replaced with
apico-interdental fricatives. The bilabial stops are harder. The
book was not quite clear, but I think it advocated using 'flabby'
apico-domal stops. I once practiced a bit and was able to reach a
sort of comprehensibility in an hour or so, before I lost interest.
I'm sure I could have gotten good with more practice.
I don't know how [w] is achieved, but I suspect a velar or postvelar
glide.
--
*****************************************************************************
Subject: linguist list questions
From: Raphael Mercado HBA <rzmsquared at yahoo.com>
hi!
i read the questions you posted on linguist list.
1) according to some studies, given the right stimulus and/or context,
people fill in the proper sound in the right places in words (ask your
nearest psycholinguist about these studies). ventriloquists most likely
replace labial consonants with alveolar consonants. so, instead of
instead of saying "there was a big spider", they would say "there was a
dig stider".
raph
=====
Dépêchons-nous de succomber à la tentation avant qu'elle ne s'éloigne.
-- Épicure
On peut résister à tout sauf à la tentation.
-- Oscar Wilde
_________________________
*****************************************************************************
Subject: Ventriloquists and bilabials
From: "David Palfreyman" <David.Palfreyman at zu.ac.ae>
Hi,
Speaking as a non-professional ventriloquist: There's a folk wisdom
tradition (in
the UK at least) that ventriloquists use velars instead of bilabials (this
is
referred to as the "gottle of geer" phenomenon). Personally, when I have
a go at it
I find I'm using dental stops instead - articulatorily (and acoustically,
I think)
as close to bilabials as you can get without moving your lips!
Cheers,
David
:-D
*****************************************************************************
Subject: ventriloquists' labials
From: "Roger Lass" <lass at iafrica.com>
Hi. Having watched ventriloquists and been instructed by really good
phoneticians, I found there's a relatively simple answer. If you think of
the oral cavity as a horn-shaped device ('Helmholtz resonator'), you'll
see
(in profile) that a labial closure and a vbelar/uvular closure produce
geometric figures with virtually the same shape, but with the closures
facing in opposite directions.
This geometry has an acoustic reflex, in that labials and velars/uvulars
have a number of features in common, such as low Formants 2/3. The effect
of
rounding can be produced by furrowing the tongue toward the back, and the
general sound of labials by experimenting with stop or fricative closures
in
the back regions. It's difficult, but you can get a reasonable
approximation.
Roger Lass
*****************************************************************************
Subject: Ventriloquists and lax i
From: "Sidney Wood" <sidney.wood at ling.lu.se>
Velars ar substituted for labials, k for p, g for b, ng for m etc., and
the
mouth is held only slightly open.
Best wishes,
Sidney Wood PhD
Dept. of Linguistics
Helgonabacken 12
223 62 LUND
Sweden
*****************************************************************************
Subject: ventriloquists and labials
From: "Richard A. Wright" <rawright at u.washington.edu>
They don't make labials. They rely on the well known tendency for lexical
and semantic context (listener expectations) to override distortions of
the
signal and substitute other stop places for the labials (alveolars and
velars depending on the performer and context).
Richard Wright, Assistant Professor
University of Washington
Department of Linguistics
Box 354340
Seattle, WA 98195-4340
rawright at u.washington.edu
*****************************************************************************
Subject: ventriloquists and labial consonants
From: "David MacGregor" <david at cal.org>
Cecil Adams addressed this question years ago. His answer can be found
here:
http://www.straightdope.com/classics/a1_306.html. He says that they
substitute a
similiar sound and count on the audience to interpret it as the target
sound. The
only example he gives though is /u/ for /w/.
Cheers,
David MacGregor
Research Associate
Language Testing Division
Center for Applied Linguistics
4646 40th St. NW
Washington, DC 20016-1859
Telephone: (202) 362-0700
Fax: (202) 362-3740
e-mail: david at cal.org
****************************************************************************
Subject: Re: 13.256, Qs: Ventriloquists/Labial Consonants, Tense/Lax /i/
From: Bart Mathias <mathias at hawaii.edu>
Hi, "Carol L. Tenny" <tenny at linguist.org>
>LL Subject: ventriloquists and labial consonants
>LL One of my students in my intro linguistics class asked today, as we
were
>LL finishing up phonetics, how ventriloquists make labial consonants
>LL without moving their lips ???
>LL I love my intro students, they ask such great questions.
>LL Anybody have any idea?
I wasn't going to try this one, but since they come two to an e-mail...
I imagine they substitute an [N] or a very nasal vowel with other
appropriate invisible contortions. Though I would probably have trouble
coming up with references at the moment, it is well known that various
articulations can produce the same acoustics. E.g., ventriloquists also
manage round [u(w)] and unround [i(j)] without moving their lips.
Bart Mathias
*****************************************************************************
Subject: ventriloquists
From: Janet Randall <randall at neu.edu>
Hi Carol,
Judy Kegl tells about interviewing Shari Lewis, who explained that to
make a labial, she lengthens the "tube" not by making the closure at the
lips but by making it at the teeth and then lengthening it on the other
end, dropping the velum. The distance of the "tube" is the same so the
consonant sounds more labial than a dental without a dropped velum. You
can write to Judy, who will have more details.
Janet Randall
*****************************************************************************
Subject: re: ventriloquists
From: Karen Froud <karenfroud at yahoo.co.uk>
Hi Carol,
That is a great question... But isn't it the case that
ventriloquists don't use labials? They substitute them
with other consonants - e.g. velars. Hence 'gottle of
geer' for 'bottle of beer'. I know nothing about this
- just reading your question for some reason made me
think of this example! Hope it's some help.
Cheers,
Karen.
================================
Dr Karen Froud
Postdoctoral Research Fellow
Dept. of Linguistics and Philosophy
M.I.T.
================================
__________________________________________________
*****************************************************************************
Subject: Ventriloquism
From: Linda_K_COLEMAN at umail.umd.edu (lc22)
My understanding is that ventriloquists use the equivalent alveolar
consonant for the bilabial consonant: [n] for [m], [t] for [p], [d] for
[b].
Hearers presumably use context to figure out which one is meant. That
said, I wonder if ventriloquists avoid certain cases where there is
potential
ambiguity, or, better, whether they rely on set phrases that automatically
direct hearers towards one or the other of two possible selections. "It's
so quiet you can hear a [tIn] drop" will be pretty easy for hearers to
interpret. Perhaps one of your students would enjoy getting a tape of a
ventriloquism performance to see how ambiguities are avoided? A possible
term paper, perhaps.
Cheers,
Linda Coleman
University of Maryland
*****************************************************************************
---------------------------------------------------------------------------
LINGUIST List: Vol-13-2072
More information about the LINGUIST
mailing list