A functional articulatory dynamic model for speech production

Introduces a statistical speech production model. The model synthesizes natural speech by modeling some key dynamic properties of vocal articulators in a linear/nonlinear state-space framework. The goal-oriented movements of the articulators (tongue tip, tongue dorsum, upper lip, lower lip, and jaw) are described in a linear dynamic state equation. The resulting articulatory trajectories, combined with the effects of the velum and larynx, are nonlinearly mapped into the acoustic feature space (MFCCs). The key challenges in this model are the development of a nonlinear parameter estimation methodology, and the incorporation of appropriate prior assumptions to assert in the articulatory dynamic structure. Such a model can also be directly applied to speech recognition to better account for coarticulation and phonetic reduction phenomena with considerably fewer parameters than HMM based approaches