Spectrographic Study of Vowel Reduction

Lindblom, Björn

doi:10.1121/1.1918816

Cited by 747 publications

(482 citation statements)

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“…For vowels, however, it is unlikely that any orosensory dimension need be so strictly controlled (e.g., Lindblom, 1963). Still, the model predicts that more variability will be seen for vowels along acoustically less important dimensions.…”

Section: Variability In Place Of Articulationmentioning

confidence: 94%

Speech sound acquisition, coarticulation, and rate effects in a neural network model of speech production.

Guenther

1995

Psychological Review

373

351

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This article describes a neural network model of speech motor skill acquisition and speech production that explains a wide range of data on variability, motor equivalence, coarticulation, and rate effects. Model parameters are learned during a babbling phase. To explain how infants learn language-specific variability limits, speech sound targets take the form of convex regions, rather than points, in orosensory coordinates. Reducing target size for better accuracy during slower speech leads to differential effects for vowels and consonants, as seen in experiments previously used as evidence for separate control processes for the 2 sound types. Anticipatory coarticulation arises when targets are reduced in size on the basis of context; this generalizes the well-known look-ahead model of coarticulation. Computer simulations verify the model's properties.The primary goal of the modeling work described in this article is to provide a coherent theoretical framework that provides explanations for a wide range of data concerning the articulator movements used by humans to produce speech sounds. This is carried out by formulating a model that transforms strings of phonemes into continuous articulator movements for producing these phonemes. This study of speech production is largely motivated by the following question of speech acquisition: How does an infant acquire the motor skills needed to produce the speech sounds of his or her native language? Speech production involves complex interactions among several different reference frames. A phonetic frame describes the sounds a speaker wishes to produce, and the signals that convey these sound units to a listener exist within an acoustic frame. Tactile and proprioceptive signals form an orosensory frame (e.g., Perkell, 1980) that describes the shape of the vocal tract, and the muscles controlling the positions of individual articulators make up an articulatory frame. The parameters governing the interactions among these frames cannot be fixed at birth. One reason for this is the language specificity of these interactions. For example, English listeners distinguish between the sounds /r/ and /!/, but Japanese listeners do not. Corresponding differences are seen in the articulator movements of the two groups (Miyawaki et al., 1975). Thus, despite some obvious commonalities between the phonetics of different languages (e.g., widespread use of consonants like /d/, /n/, and /s/ across the world's languages), the precise nature of mappings between acoustic goals and articulator movements depends on the lanThis research was supported in part by Air Force Office of Scientific Research F49620-92-J-0499. I would like to thank Dan Bullock and Elliot Saltzman for their insightful suggestions on an earlier

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Section: Variability In Place Of Articulationmentioning

confidence: 94%

Speech sound acquisition, coarticulation, and rate effects in a neural network model of speech production.

Guenther

1995

Psychological Review

373

351

View full text Add to dashboard Cite

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“…Consequently, the speaker is forced to spend more energy on coming close to the specified targets for stressed syllables than for the more loosely defined unstressed syllables. A fast articulation rate is inevitably accompanied by undershoot of the pre-defined targets (Lindblom, 1963;Moon and Lindblom, 1994). One of the reasons for this undershoot is the inertia, or stiffness, of the speech organs.…”

Section: Discussionmentioning

confidence: 99%

Word-level intelligibility of time-compressed speech: prosodic and segmental factors

Janse

Nooteboom

Quené

2003

Speech Communication

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In this study we investigate whether speakers, in line with the predictions of the Hyper-and Hypospeech theory, speed up most during the least informative parts and less during the more informative parts, when they are asked to speak faster. We expected listeners to benefit from these changes in timing, and our main goal was to find out whether making the temporal organisation of artificially time-compressed speech more like that of natural fast speech would improve intelligibility over linear time compression. Our production study showed that speakers reduce unstressed syllables more than stressed syllables, thereby making the prosodic pattern more pronounced. We extrapolated fast speech timing to even faster rates because we expected that the more salient prosodic pattern could be exploited in difficult listening situations. However, at very fast speech rates, applying fast speech timing worsens intelligibility. We argue that the non-uniform way of speeding up may not be due to an underlying communicative principle, but may result from speakersÕ inability to speed up otherwise. As both prosodic and segmental information contribute to word recognition, we conclude that extrapolating fast speech timing to extremely fast rates distorts this balance between prosodic and segmental information.

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“…Consequently, the speaker is forced to spend more energy on approximating the specified targets for stressed syllables than for the more loosely defined unstressed syllables. Although a moderate increase in speech rate is not necessarily accompanied by target undershoot Pols, 1990, 1992), a considerable increase in articulation rate (of, say, more than 20%) is almost inevitably accompanied by undershoot of the pre-defined targets because of the inertia of the speech organs (Lindblom, 1963;Moon and Lindblom, 1994). The increase in rate in the present experiment (1.4 times normal rate in Experiment 2) was clearly beyond 20%, so the fast speech must have been segmentally ÔreducedÕ.…”

Section: Discussionmentioning

confidence: 99%

“…This means that the speaker is forced to spend more energy on approximating the specified targets for stressed syllables than for the more loosely defined unstressed syllables. A faster articulation rate (i.e., beyond a 20% increase in rate) is almost inevitably accompanied by undershoot of the pre-defined targets because of the inertia of the speech organs (Lindblom, 1963;Moon and Lindblom, 1994). If more precision is required for the stressed syllables than for the unstressed syllables, the speaker simply cannot speed up that much during the production of stressed syllables.…”

Section: Introductionmentioning

confidence: 99%

Word perception in fast speech: artificially time-compressed vs. naturally produced fast speech

Janse

2004

Speech Communication

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Natural fast speech differs from normal-rate speech with respect to its temporal pattern. Previous results showed that word intelligibility of heavily artificially time-compressed speech could not be improved by making its temporal pattern more similar to that of natural fast speech. This might have been due to the extrapolation of timing rules for natural fast speech to rates that are much faster than can be attained by human speakers. The present study investigates whether, at a speech rate that human speakers can attain, artificially time-compressed speech is easier to process if its timing pattern is similar to that of naturally produced fast speech. Our first experiment suggests, however, that word processing speed was slowed down, relative to linear compression. In a second experiment, word processing of artificially time-compressed speech was compared with processing of naturally produced fast speech. Even when naturally produced fast speech is perfectly intelligible, its less careful articulation, combined with the changed timing pattern, slows down processing, relative to linearly time-compressed speech. Furthermore, listeners preferred artificially time-compressed speech over naturally produced fast speech. These results suggest that linearly time-compressed speech has both a temporal and a segmental advantage over natural fast speech.

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Spectrographic Study of Vowel Reduction

Cited by 747 publications

References 0 publications

Speech sound acquisition, coarticulation, and rate effects in a neural network model of speech production.

Speech sound acquisition, coarticulation, and rate effects in a neural network model of speech production.

Word-level intelligibility of time-compressed speech: prosodic and segmental factors

Word perception in fast speech: artificially time-compressed vs. naturally produced fast speech

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