Palatography is a technique used to identify which parts of the mouth are used when making different sounds. This technique is often used by

linguist Linguistics is the scientific study of language. The areas of linguistic analysis are syntax (rules governing the structure of sentences), semantics (meaning), Morphology (linguistics), morphology (structure of words), phonetics (speech sounds ...

s doing field work on little-known

natural languages A natural language or ordinary language is a language that occurs naturally in a human community by a process of use, repetition, and Language change, change. It can take different forms, typically either a spoken language or a sign language. Na ...

. A record made through palatography is called a ''palatogram''. It involves painting a coloring agent, such as a

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and

olive oil Olive oil is a vegetable oil obtained by pressing whole olives (the fruit of ''Olea europaea'', a traditional Tree fruit, tree crop of the Mediterranean Basin) and extracting the oil. It is commonly used in cooking for frying foods, as a cond ...

on the

tongue The tongue is a Muscle, muscular organ (anatomy), organ in the mouth of a typical tetrapod. It manipulates food for chewing and swallowing as part of the digestive system, digestive process, and is the primary organ of taste. The tongue's upper s ...

or the roof of a person's mouth and having that person pronounce a specific sound. A photograph is then made of the mouth roof and tongue in order to determine how the sound was articulated. The technique can also be performed electronically ( electropalatography) using a tool called a pseudo-palate, which consists of a

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-like plate lined with electrodes that is placed on the roof of the mouth while the speaker pronounces a sound.

References

External links

www.linguistics.ucla.edu Static Palatography

www.linguistics.ucla.edu "Preserving the Sounds of Disappearing Languages"

Scholar Space: Static Palatography for Language Fieldwork
Human voice Phonetics {{phonetics-stub

See also

References

External links