Speaker: Arthur Toth
Title: Cross-Speaker Articulatory Position Modeling for Speech Production

Abstract:
The primary parameterizations of speech used in automatic speech
recognition and synthesis are based on DSP techniques.  MFCC, LPCC,
and derived features can be readily extracted from acoustic signals
and allow the construction of relatively high-performance speech
systems.  However, these features (though related) are a bit removed
from the actual physical process of speaking.  While a person speaks,
the produced sound is the result of respiration and voicing, combined
with the motions of articulators, which affect the shape of the vocal
tract.  The locations of these articulators should also be useful for
the parameterization of speech, and should enable the construction of
new models.  Unfortunately, articulatory position data are difficult
to collect.

Given these circumstances, a few natural questions to ask are:
1.) What makes articulatory position data worthwhile?
2.) How good are the models that can be created with articulatory 
    position data and can they be improved?
3.) How can the small amount of available articulatory position data 
    be leveraged?

This talk will discuss the results of various experiments concerning
the use of articulatory position data to predict quantities that are
useful for speech synthesis and further experiments to examine whether
these data can be applied to models for other speakers for whom no
articulatory position data are available.