MULTI-SPEAKER VALIDATION OF COARTICULATION MODELS OF SYLLABIC NUCLEI.

Abstract

The acoustical dynamics within English CVC syllables is modeled by a set of phonetically motivated parametric functions of the formant-frequency trajectories of vocalic nuclei. The notion of linear superposition of contextual effects leads to an approximate decomposition of vowel-formant transitions into a constant vowel target, an initial CV transition, and a final VC transition. The latter transitions are further modeled as L plus kf(n) and L prime plus k prime f(n), where f(n) and g(n) are per-consonant common-contour shape functions, k and k prime are scaling constants, and L and L prime are interpreted as consonant loci. These models were tested on a small database produced by three native Australian male speakers, who recorded five repetitions of Australian English syllables. The techniques for constructing these models from formant data are presented, and fits to multispeaker test data are analyzed. Show more