Dynamic versus static specification for the perceptual identity of a coarticulated vowel

Abstract

International audienceThis paper presents a perceptual experiment on stimuli synthesized by means of a vocal tract area function model. The purpose was to compare the contribution of dynamic against static information to the identity of a coarticulated vowel. Three sources of information were perceptually analyzed: (i) the vowel nucleus; (ii) the acoustical contrast between the vowel nucleus and the ``stationary'' parts of its immediate context; (iii) and the transitions linking the stable parts of the speech signal. The results show that the vocoïds were better identified by dynamic information. This backs up the perceptual overshoot model proposed Lindblom. However, this conclusion must be confirmed by further experiments