Leibniz-Zentrum Allgemeine Sprachwissenschaft Leibniz-Gemeinschaft

SPEECHart - Speaker-specific articulation as adaptation to individual vocal tract shapes

The SPRECHart (SPEECHart) - project aims at a deeper understanding of the often reported speaker-specific articulation and explains them with respect to individual vocal tract shapes. Thanks to our cooperation partners, we will make use of some already recorded magnetresonance imaging data, computer tomographic and x-ray data of about 50 speakers producing several vowels. On the basis of these anatomical data we will parameterise the individual vocal tract shapes in a first step. In a second step we will implement these vocal tract shapes in a biomechanical tongue model in order to build speaker specific models. These models allow us to examine the link between motor commands, articulation, and acoustics and their respective variability.

Moreover, we will investigate the degree of jaw opening in low vowel production. Jaw opening has often been reported to be speaker-specific. We will discuss jaw opening as a potential compensation mechanism for particular vocal tract shapes.

The project will allow us to understand the role of the vocal tract shape (not only size!) and its constraints on acoustics and articulation.

Publications

Winkler, Ralf & Fuchs, Susanne & Perrier, Pascal & Tiede, Mark. (2011). Biomechanical Tongue Models: An Approach to Studying Inter-Speaker Variability.. Proceedings of the Annual Conference of the International Speech Communication Association, INTERSPEECH. 273-276.

Ralf Winkler, Susanne Fuchs, Pascal Perrier, Mark Tiede. 2011. Can the location of the vocal tract bending constrain individual vowel articulation? Evidence from biomechanical modelling.. Ben Maasen & Pascal van Lieshout. 6th International Conference on Speech Motor Control (SMC 2011), Jun 2011, Groningen, Netherlands. Nimegen University Press, 17 (Supplement), pp.19

Winkler, Ralf, Susanne Fuchs, Pascal Perrier & Mark Tiede. 2011. Speaker-specific biomechanical models: From acoustic variability via articulatory variability to the variability of motor commands in selected tongue muscles. In Yves Laprie (ed.), Proceedings of the ISSP, 219-226. Montreal: CD-ROM.

Partner

Pascal Perrier
GIPSA-lab, ICP Grenoble

Rudolph Sock
Université March Bloch, Strasbourg

Mark Tiede
Haskins Laboratories, New Haven

Doug Whalen
Haskins Laboratories, New Haven

Bernd Kröger
Universitätsklinikum Aachen

Phil Hoole
Ludwig-Maximilians-Universität München

Bernd Pompino-Marschall
Humboldt Universität Berlin

Brad Story
University of Arizona