CAREER: From Imaging and Acoustic Data to Articulatory Synthesis

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Quantitative models of the human speech production system are needed for a better understanding of our cognitive abilities and for the development of high-quality speech synthesizers and automatic speech recognition systems. In the proposed research, production models for fricative consonants are developed. Modeling fricative consonants has always been a challenging problem because of the complex production mechanisms and the lack of sufficient articulatory and aerodynamic data for these sounds. In this study, articulatory data are obtained from Magnetic Resonance Images (MRI) and Dynamic Electropalatography (EPG), and aerodynamic data, from flow and pressure measurements. MRI reveals the 3D geometry of the vocal tract while EPG is important for studying articulatory dynamics. Aerodynamic data are crucial for studying turbulence generation during fricative production. The modeling approach is based on estimation theory, acoustics, and signal-processing techniques and uses the data obtained from the unified set of measurements described above. Although the study focuses on fricatives, the proposed novel approach can be used to study all speech sounds. In addition, the study fosters cross-disciplinary activities in Electrical Engineering, Radiology, and Linguistics. By developing parametric speech production models and by inferring articulatory dynamics from the acoustic waveform, better performance of speech synthesizers and speech recognition systems can be achieved.