Our physical models of the human vocal tract successfully demonstrate theories such as the source-filter theory of speech production, mechanisms such as the relationship between vocal-tract configuration and vowel quality, and phenomena such as formant frequency estimation. Earlier models took one of two directions: either simplification, showing only a few target themes, or diversification, simulating human articulation more broadly. In this study, we have designed a static, hybrid model. Each model of this type produces one vowel. However, the model also simulates the human articulators more broadly, including the lips, teeth, and tongue. The sagittal block is enclosed with transparent plates so that the inside of the vocal tract is visible from the outside. We also colored the articulators to make them more easily identified. In testing, we confirmed that the vocal-tract models can produce the target vowel. These models have great potential, with applications not only in acoustics and phonetics education, but also pronunciation training in language learning and speech therapy in the clinical setting.
Cite as: Arai, T. (2017) Vocal-Tract Model with Static Articulators: Lips, Teeth, Tongue, and More. Proc. Interspeech 2017, 4028-4029
@inproceedings{arai17b_interspeech,
author={Takayuki Arai},
title={{Vocal-Tract Model with Static Articulators: Lips, Teeth, Tongue, and More}},
year=2017,
booktitle={Proc. Interspeech 2017},
pages={4028--4029}
}