Control of an articulatory speech synthesizer based on dynamic approximation of spatial articulatory targets

We present a novel approach to the generation of speech movements for an articulatory speech synthesizer. The movements of the articulators are modeled by dynamical third order linear systems that respond to sequences of simple motor commands. The motor commands are derived automatically from a high level schedule for the input phonemes. The proposed model considers velocity differences of the articulators and accounts for coarticulation between vowels and consonants. Preliminary tests of the model in the framework of an articulatory speech synthesizer indicate its potential to produce realistic speech movements and thereby to contribute to a higher quality of the synthesized speech.