EUROSPEECH '95 Fourth European Conference on Speech Communication and Technology Madrid, Spain September 18-21, 1995

Analysis for Palatalized Articulation of [s] Sounds Using Synthetic Speech

Takayuki Arai (1), Keiko Okazaki (2), Setsuko Imatomi (3), Yuichi Yoshida (1)

(1) Dept. of Electrical and Electronic Engineering, Sophia Univ., Tokyo, Japan
(2) Dept. of Plastic and Reconstructive Surgery, School of Medicine, Showa Univ., Tokyo, Japan
(3) Dept. of Speech Therapy, Fujigaoka Rehabilitation Hospital, Showa Univ., Yokohama, Japan

Palatalized articulation (PA) is frequently observed in speech uttered by postoperative cleft palate patients. We analyzed the PA of [s] sounds and tested human perception of certain synthetic sounds to verify the characteristics of the PA of [s] sounds in Japanese. After analyzing the PA of [s] with linear predictive (LP) analysis, the mono-syllable /sa/, /su/ and /se/ were synthesized by an all-pole model. To synthesize the fricatives, we shifted the frequency of a complex-conjugate pole pair of a filter from 1000 to 3400 Hz. A perceptual experiment involving three speech therapists was carried out to analyze perception of the three syllables. From the results we concluded that fricatives having a peak around 1800 Hz tend to be identified as the PA of [s].

Full Paper

Bibliographic reference.  Arai, Takayuki / Okazaki, Keiko / Imatomi, Setsuko / Yoshida, Yuichi (1995): "Analysis for palatalized articulation of [s] sounds using synthetic speech", In EUROSPEECH-1995, 1725-1728.