UC Berkeley PhonLab Annual Report

Previous research [1, 2] shows that articulatory variability is reduced for people with flatter palates. It has been hypothesized [1] that this is because the mapping between articulation and acoustics is more linear for flatter than for more domed palates. A combination of two synthesizers were used to model how vocal tract anatomy influences the mapping of articulation onto acoustics, using American English /r/ as a test case. A retroflexable tongue tip was added to the articulatory parameters. Two additional palate shapes and a sublingual cavity that appears during /r/ production were also added to the synthesizer. A Python script searched the articulatory-acoustic space for vocal tract configurations that resulted in a low F3 (the hallmark acoustic cue for /r/) for each palate. Palate shape influences not only the overall sensitivity of the articulatory-acoustic mapping, but also the effect of each individual articulatory parameter on F3.