Analyzing vocal tract movements during speech accommodation

When two people engage in verbal interaction, they tend to accommodate on a variety of linguistic levels. Although recent attention has focused on to the acoustic characteristics of convergence in speech, the underlying articulatory mechanisms remain to be explored. Using 3D electromagnetic articulography (EMA), we simultaneously recorded articulatory movements in two speakers engaged in an interactive verbal game, the domino task. In this task, the two speakers take turn in chaining bi-syllabic words according to a rhyming rule. By using a robust speaker identification strategy, we identified for which specific words speakers converged or diverged. Then, we explored the different vocal tract features characterizing speech accommodation. Our results suggest that tongue movements tend to slow down during convergence whereas maximal jaw opening during convergence and divergence differs depending on syllable position.