Articulatory Information from Acoustic Data
Manfred R. Schroeder · The Journal of the Acoustical Society of America · 1966
The extraction of articulatory information from acoustic data is an attractive alternative to cineradiographic methods for studying articulation during connected speech. However, two major difficulties complicate the transformation from acoustic to articulatory descriptions: uncertainty of the vocal excitation function and nonuniqueness of the vocal-tract area function (for a given transfer function). Methods for overcoming these difficulties are described. A particularly promising approach is based on a recently discovered unique relation between the area function of a smooth tract and the impedance function at the lips. Area functions obtained from speech spectra and impedance functions are illustrated and compared with the x-ray data. The potential of new acoustic-analysis techniques as a supplement to and substitute for x-ray analysis is evaluated.