Abstract
Fricative consonants are known to be pronounced by controlling turbulent flow inside a vocal tract. In this study, a simplified vocal tract model was proposed to investigate the characteristics of flow and sound during production of the fricative [s] in a word context. By controlling the inlet flow rate and tongue speed, the acoustic characteristics of [s] were reproduced by the model. The measurements with a microphone and a hot-wire anemometer showed that the flow velocity at the teeth gap and far-field sound pressure started oscillating before the tongue reached the /s/ position, and continued during tongue descent. This behaviour was not affected by the changes of the tongue speed. These results indicate that there is a time shift between source generation and tongue movement. This time shift can be a physical constraint in the articulation of words which include /s/. With the proposed model, we could investigate the effects of tongue speed on the flow and sound generation in a parametric way. The proposed methodology is applicable for other phonemes to further explore the aeroacoustics of phonation.
Highlights
Fricative consonants are known to be produced by using turbulent jet flow and its aeroacoustic sound source in a vocal tract [1]
The spectrogram for each tongue speed shows that the duration of the maximum amplitude is shortened as tongue speed decreases
A simplified vocal tract model was proposed to investigate the relationship between tongue movement and sound generation in the articulation of [s]
Summary
Fricative consonants are known to be produced by using turbulent jet flow and its aeroacoustic sound source in a vocal tract [1]. The jet flow is generated at the constricted flow channel formed by the anterior portion of the tongue and hard palate. When fricatives are generated in the production of words, the aeroacoustic sound appears as a broad-band noise above 4 kHz [2] within 100–200 ms before and/or after the vowel is produced [3]. Measurement based on electropalatography [3] indicates that tongue contact on the hard palate occurs after the appearance of fricative noise, whereas the duration of the sound is longer than the duration of the tongue contact. The measurement revealed a time shift of the sound generation to the tongue movement, the mechanisms and timing of the aeroacoustic sound generation are still unclear
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