INTERSPEECH 2009 10th Annual Conference of the International Speech Communication Association Brighton, United Kingdom September 6-10, 2009

Simple Physical Models of the Vocal Tract for Education in Speech Science

Takayuki Arai

Sophia University, Japan

In the speech-related field, physical models of the vocal tract are effective tools for education in acoustics. Arai’s cylinder-type models are based on Chiba and Kajiyama’s measurement of vocal-tract shapes. The models quickly and effectively demonstrate vowel production. In this study, we developed physical models with simplified shapes as educational tools to illustrate how vocal-tract shape accounts for differences among vowels. As a result, the five Japanese vowels were produced by tube-connected models, where several uniform tubes with different cross-sectional areas and lengths are connected as Fant’s and Arai’s three-tube models.

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Bibliographic reference.  Arai, Takayuki (2009): "Simple physical models of the vocal tract for education in speech science", In INTERSPEECH-2009, 756-759.