The role of subglottal acoustics in speech production and perception

Abstract

In this talk, we present an overview of subglottal acoustics, with emphasis on the significant anatomical structures that define subglottal resonances, and we present results from our experiments incorporating subglottal resonances into automatic speaker normalization and speech recognition technologies. Speech samples used in the modeling and perception studies were obtained from a new speech corpus (the UCLA-WashU subglottal database) of simultaneous microphone and (subglottal) accelerometer recordings of 50 adult speakers of American English (AE). We will discuss new findings about the Young's Modulus of tracheal soft tissue, the viscosity of tracheal cartilage, and the effect of going from a circular cross-section to a rectangular cross-section in the conus elasticus. We also present results from studies demonstrating a small, but significant, role of subglottal resonances in discriminating speaker height and of the interaction between subglottal resonances and formants in height discrimination.