ASA 124th Meeting New Orleans 1992 October

4aSP1. A simulation study of the relation between vocal tract movement and energy changes in restricted frequency bands.

Y. Wu

Dept. of Elec. Eng., Univ. of New Orleans, Lakefront, New Orleans, LA 70148

R. J. Porter

R. E. Trahan

T. E. Riemer

Univ. of New Orleans, Lakefront, New Orleans, LA 70148

A four-tube model of the vocal tract was used to investigate the relationship between systematic variations in tube-segment diameter and changes in energy within different frequency regions. The hypothesized near linear relation between changes in displacement and changes in energy was observed for some frequency regions. This result suggests that tracking of energy changes within select frequency bands might provide rather direct information on the kinematics (and, perhaps, the kinetics) of the articulators. Implications of the result for the evaluation of articulatory abnormalities as well as for theories of speech perception will be discussed.