Can the location of the vocal tract bending constrain individual vowel articulation? Evidence from biomechanical modelling.

Ralf Winkler (1, 2) , Susanne Fuchs (2) , Pascal Perrier (1) , Mark Tiede (3)

1 GIPSA-MAGIC - GIPSA - Machines parlantes, Gestes oro-faciaux, Interaction Face-à-face, Communication augmentée
2 ZAS - Zentrum für Allgemeine Sprachwissenschaft [Berlin]
3 Haskins Laboratories

Speakers of a given language vary with respect to their acoustics, articulation, and motor commands. This variation is driven by a variety of influences, such as emotional states, communicative interaction, and individual properties of the vocal tract. In this work we focus on the latter. First, we build speaker-specific biomechanical tongue models. Second, we discuss the impact of the relative position of the bending in the vocal tract on the basis of extensive simulations with two different models.

Keywords: Inter-speaker variability; vocal tract morphology; biomechanical models

Domains: Linguistics; Linguistics; Neuroscience; Cognitive Sciences

Ralf Winkler, Susanne Fuchs, Pascal Perrier, Mark Tiede. Can the location of the vocal tract bending constrain individual vowel articulation? Evidence from biomechanical modelling.. SMC 2011 - 6th International Conference on Speech Motor Control (SMC 2011), Jun 2011, Groningen, Netherlands. pp.19. ⟨hal-00605630⟩