Articulatory synthesis of French connected speech from EMA data

This paper reports an experiment in synthesizing French connected speech using Maeda’s digital simulation of the vocaltract system. The dynamics of the vocal-tract shape are estimated from the dynamics of Electromagnetic Articulograph (EMA) sensors via Maeda’s geometrical articulatory model. Time-varying characteristics of the glottis and the velopharyngeal port are set using empirical rules, while the fundamental frequency pattern is copied from the concurrently recorded audio signal. A subjective experiment was performed online to assess the perceived intelligibility and naturalness of the synthesized speech. Results indicate that a properly driven simulation of the vocal tract has the potential to provide a scientifically grounded alternative to the development of text-to-speech synthesis systems.