An analysis of articulatory-acoustic data based on articulatory strokes

An articulatory gestural unit representation called ldquoarticulatory strokerdquo is introduced. It aims to capture the constriction formation and release of a speech articulator such as the tongue tip. In that regard, the articulatory stroke is an attempt at a practical realization of the abstract articulatory gestures central to Articulatory Phonology. In this study we focus on the articulatory strokes associated with the critical articulator that is essential to realize a target phone. The critical articulatory stroke is parameterized in order to investigate the predictability of the parameters from phonetic contexts and to check the statistical dependency of acoustic changes associated with the critical articulatory strokes. Canonical correlation analysis between the articulatory strokes and DeltaMFCCs showed that the critical articulatory strokes are more responsible to the acoustic changes inside target phonemes than non-critical articulators. This implies that modeling acoustic changes due to critical articulations could provide an edge in improving ASR performance.