The basic three-pararneter vocal tract area function model of Fant [2] has been extended to allow for asymmetry and variable length of the tongue hump section as well as variations of the VT overalllength. An important class of articulations are those that conform with this model, mostly vowel sounds and consonants wi~hout . apical . modification or a secondary posterior art1culatton. Starmg ou...

A power-weighted formant frequency estimation procedure based on Linear Predictive Coding (LPC) is presented. It works by pre-emphasizing the dominant spectral components of an input signal, which allows a subsequent step to extract frequencies with greater accuracy. The accuracy traditional LPC improved this new estimator for different classes synthetic signals and speech. Power-weighted signi...

A congenital heart disease (CHD) is a defect in the structure of the heart and great vessels of a newborn.CHD s are classified into Cyanotic and Acyanotic. The most common cyanotic heart disorder in infants is Tetralogy of Fallot (TOF). Among Acyanotic heart disorders, Ventricular Septal Defect (VSD), Atrial Septal Defect (ASD), and Patent Ductus Arteriosus (PDA) are common. The present work ai...

The representation of speech goals was explored using an auditory feedback paradigm. When talkers produce vowels the formant structure of which is perturbed in real time, they compensate to preserve the intended goal. When vowel formants are shifted up or down in frequency, participants change the formant frequencies in the opposite direction to the feedback perturbation. In this experiment, th...

We model the vocal tract as a lossless acoustic tube and consider the relationship between the resonant frequencies and the cross-sectional area function. Empirical results show that if the logarithm of the area function is band limited preserving only 2n Fourier components, the lowest n pole and n zero frequencies of the admittance function measured at the lips uniquely determine the area coef...

Fundamental and formant frequencies influence perceived pitch and are sexually dimorphic in humans. The information content of these acoustic parameters can illuminate the forces of sexual selection shaping vocal sex differences as well as the mechanisms that ensure signal reliability. We use multiple regression to examine the relationships between somatic (height, adiposity, and strength) and ...

Speech sensorimotor adaptation is the short-term learning of modified articulator movements evoked through sensoryfeedback perturbations. A common experimental method manipulates acoustic parameters, such as formant frequencies, using real time resynthesis of the participant's speech to perturb auditory feedback. While some studies have examined phrases comprised of vowels, diphthongs, and semi...

This paper addresses the problem of how to estimate reliable formant frequencies in high-pitched speech (typical in children), and how to normalize these estimations, independent from vocal tract shape or length. The normalized formant frequencies are used to improve the performance of a ComputerAided Speech Therapy Tool (CASTT) in Spanish. For this purpose, a study was conducted to see what is...

Changes in speech rate severely affect the performance of continuous speech recognition systems. In order to better understand the underlying effects of speech rate changes an analysis was carried out on the influence of duration on the spectral properties of vowels in a large German corpus of spontaneous speech. The results show a strong centralisation effect of the vowel formant frequencies d...

“Throaty” is a term used for voice quality, generally pejorative, but sometimes considered as a desirable timbral ornament in non-classical singing. The throatiness of a male subject’s examples of the vowels /u, i, a, ae/ pronounced in throaty and normal voice were rated by an expert panel, showing that the examples were representative. The formant frequencies of these vowels were analysed by i...