Estimating phoneme formant targets and coarticulation parameters of conversational and clear speech

Brian O. Bush, Alexander Kain

Research output: Chapter in Book/Report/Conference proceedingConference contribution

4 Scopus citations

Abstract

We present a data-driven formant model and methodology for discovering its parameters, namely phoneme targets and coarticulation functions for consonant-vowel-consonant (CVC) words from fully-automatic formant data. The model uses formant targets that are speaker dependent, but independent of speaking style and phonemic context. We used a global error measure to search for optimal formant targets for all phonemes, including classes of sounds where formants are not directly observable. Analysis of coarticulation parameters found significant differences in parameters between clear and conversational speech. Estimated formant targets were largely in agreement with acoustic-phonetic expectations. An intelligibility test validated that resynthesized CVC words using modeled formant trajectories were nearly as intelligible as resynthesized CVC words using observed formant trajectories.

Original languageEnglish (US)
Title of host publication2013 IEEE International Conference on Acoustics, Speech, and Signal Processing, ICASSP 2013 - Proceedings
Pages8017-8021
Number of pages5
DOIs
StatePublished - Oct 18 2013
Event2013 38th IEEE International Conference on Acoustics, Speech, and Signal Processing, ICASSP 2013 - Vancouver, BC, Canada
Duration: May 26 2013May 31 2013

Publication series

NameICASSP, IEEE International Conference on Acoustics, Speech and Signal Processing - Proceedings
ISSN (Print)1520-6149

Other

Other2013 38th IEEE International Conference on Acoustics, Speech, and Signal Processing, ICASSP 2013
Country/TerritoryCanada
CityVancouver, BC
Period5/26/135/31/13

Keywords

  • clear speech
  • coarticulation
  • formants

ASJC Scopus subject areas

  • Software
  • Signal Processing
  • Electrical and Electronic Engineering

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