The carrier nature of speech

Speech synthesizing is here discussed in the terminology of carrier circuits. The speaker is pictured as a sort of radio broadcast transmitter with the message to be sent out originating in the studio of the talker's brain and manifesting itself in muscular wave motions in the vocal tract. Although these motions contain the message, they are inaudible because they occur at syllabic rates. An audible sound is needed to pass the message into the listener's ear. This is provided by the carrier in the form of a group of higher frequency waves in the audible range set up by oscillatory action at the vocal cords or elsewhere in the vocal tract. These carrier waves either in their generation or their transmission are modulated by the message waves to form the speech waves. As the speech waves contain the message information on an audible carrier they are adapted to broadcast reception by receiving sets in the form of listeners' ears. The message is then recovered by the listeners' minds.