Acoustics and synthesis of fricative consonants

Abstract

This paper attempts to integrate some recent research of Dennis Klatt on the analysis and synthesis of fricative consonants with further experimental and theoretical studies of fricative production. The speech production studies examine data on airflows and pressures during voiced and voiceless fricatives, and estimate from these data the time variation of the areas of the glottal and supraglottal constrictions and the spectra of the sound sources at these constrictions. These calculations are based on theoretical and experimental data on airflow in constricted tubes and on sound generation in turbulent flow. Acoustic spectra in a number of utterances containing fricatives in various vowel environments are measured at critical points within the utterances, and are interpreted in terms of the production studies. Particular attention is paid to events near the consonant‐vowel and vowel‐consonant boundaries, where the dominant source changes from frication noise to aspiration noise to glottal vibration. Based on this research, new synthesis rules for fricative consonants are proposed. [Research supported in part by NIH Grant No. NS‐04332.]