Abstract

Articulatory setting postures adopted during speech production are examined with the goal of determining whether setting postures are more mechanically advantageous than rest positions in facilitating motion of vocal tract articulators toward task goals. Articulatory simulations using the Task Dynamics Application (TADA) suggest that setting postures afford large changes with respect to speech tasks for relatively small changes in low-level speech articulators, thus affording greater mechanical advantage as compared to absolute rest postures. This study investigates this hypothesis using real-time Magnetic Resonance Imaging (rtMRI) data of read and spontaneous speech elicited from 5 healthy speakers of American English. Frames corresponding to inter-speech pauses, speech-ready intervals and absolute rest intervals were identified and image features were automatically extracted to quantify the vocal tract …

Date

2013

Authors

Vikram Ramanarayanan, Adam Lammert, Louis Goldstein, Shrikanth Narayanan

Journal

Proceedings of Meetings on Acoustics

Volume

19

Issue

1

Publisher

AIP Publishing