Kinematic formant-to-area mapping

Abstract This article presents a method of formant-to-area mapping consisting of the direct calculation of the time derivatives of the cross-sections and length of a vocal tract model so that the time derivatives of the observed formant frequencies and the model's eigenfrequencies match. The vocal tract model is a concatenation of uniform tubelets whose cross-section areas and lengths can vary in time. Time derivatives of the tubelet parameters are obtained by solving a linear algebraic system of equations. The derivatives are then numerically integrated to arrive at cross-section and length movements. Since more than one area function is compatible with the observed formant frequencies, pseudo-energy constraints are made use of to determine a unique solution. The results show that the formant-matched movements of the tubelet cross-sections and lengths are smooth, and that the agreement between the observed and model-generated formant frequencies is better than 0.01 Hz.

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