14th International Congress of Phonetic Sciences (ICPhS-14) San Francisco, CA, USA August 1-7, 1999

Higher-Level Synthesis of Devoiceable Syllables

Jonathan Rodgers (1,2)

(1) Institute of Phonetics and Digital Speech Processing, University of Kiel, Germany
(2) University of Cambridge Department of Linguistics, UK

Structural segmental properties offer a partial account of patterns of devoicing in English vowels. HLsyn is used to test the validity of explanations in terms of articulatoryacoustic relations that are thought to underlie realizations found in English and German. Manipulation and appropriate phasing of parameters corresponding to subglottal pressure, degree of tongue-blade constriction and degree of glottal opening generate a range of convincing realizations that mirror those found in genuinely natural speech.

Full Paper

Bibliographic reference.  Rodgers, Jonathan (1999): "Higher-level synthesis of devoiceable syllables", In ICPhS-14, 519-522.