RI: Small: Speaker-Specific Articulatory Strategies

言语是一种独特的人类行为，它涉及到将离散的认知语言表征转换为言语发音器官的连续复杂运动。通过帮助更好地了解这种转换机制在健康语音产生中的变化和限制，该项目有助于评估与神经系统疾病（如失用症）相关的语音障碍。此外，它为新的科学驱动的范例铺平了道路，以自动合成语音文本;一种对社会包容日益重要的技术。它还为学生提供了一个独特的跨学科培训机会，整合了语言科学研究的各个方面。新的动态成像数据的语音生产，分析结果，并导出模型与更广泛的研究community.The项目的重点是对协调模式的运动控制的语音发音朝着实现语音生产的目标（发音策略）共享。的目的是开发一个工具集，用于表征这种变化，这也将使映射语音表示特定于扬声器的动态声道。该项目建立在发音语音学和任务动力学的框架之上，这些框架提供了一个从语言结构生成声道动力学的模型，其中声道中语言相关收缩的形成受动力系统的时间部署的支配：临界阻尼振荡器，其在时间上由包括目标的参数表征（发音运动的最终目标）和自然频率（运动轨迹的时间过程）。该模型使用32名说话人的声道实时磁共振成像数据进行了更新，以便从三个层面表征他们的言语产生行为：（i）说话行为中提出的声道变形;（ii）这些变形对实现语音目标的相对贡献;以及（iii）发音姿势的时间协调，以产生良好的发音。使用最先进的声道成像技术直接观察到的个体、说话者特定的发音策略的这种特征，极大地有助于我们理解语音恒定性的基础是什么，以及是什么通过语音背景、说话者解剖、该奖项反映了NSF的法定使命，并被认为是值得通过评估使用基金会的知识优点和更广泛的影响审查标准。

Speech is a uniquely human act that involves the conversion of discrete cognitive, linguistic representations to continuous, complex movements of speech articulators. By helping to understand better the variability and constraints of this conversion mechanism in healthy speech production, this project contributes to assessing speech disorders associated with neurological disease, such as apraxia. Moreover, it paves the way for novel science-driven paradigms to automatic synthesis of speech from text; a technology of increasing importance for social inclusion. It also provides a unique interdisciplinary training opportunity for students, integrating exposure to various facets of speech science research. Novel dynamic imaging data of speech production, analysis results, and derived models are shared with the broader research community.The focus of this project is on the coordinative patterns governing the movement of speech articulators toward the achievement of speech production goals (articulatory strategies). The aim to develop a toolset for characterizing this variability, that will also enable mapping phonological representations to speaker-specific dynamics of the vocal tract. The project builds upon the frameworks of Articulatory Phonology and Task Dynamics that provide a model for generating vocal-tract dynamics from linguistic structures, in which the formation of linguistically relevant constrictions in the vocal tract is governed by the temporal deployment of dynamical systems: critically damped oscillators that are characterized temporally by parameters including targets (end goals of articulatory movements) and natural frequencies (time-course of the movement trajectories). This model is updated using vocal-tract real-time magnetic resonance imaging data from 32 speakers, in order to characterize their speech production behavior at three levels: (i) the vocal-tract deformations put forth in the act of speaking; (ii) the relative contributions of those deformations towards the achievement of phonological goals; and (iii) the temporal coordination of articulatory gestures for the production of well-formed utterances. Such characterizations of individual, speaker-specific articulatory strategies, as directly observed using state-of-the-art vocal-tract imaging technology, significantly contributes to our understanding of what underlies phonological constancy and what drives individual variability via phonetic context, speaker anatomy, and speaking style.This award reflects NSF's statutory mission and has been deemed worthy of support through evaluation using the Foundation's intellectual merit and broader impacts review criteria.