The roles of models in speech communication research

Abstract

The use of models is a key to development of science and technology. Only through modeling can one test various ideas, hypotheses, and theories against what one observes in nature. This paper first gives a systematic review of models that have been developed in the past on various aspects of speech communication, both between humans and between human and machine. These include speech production models, speech acoustics models, speech perception models, as well as language models and dialogue models. It will then describe briefly some of the models developed by the current author. Finally, it will discuss those aspects that have not been modeled so far, and present the author’s prospects on how to model them. This paper is dedicated to Manfred Schroeder, whose distinguished contributions in many areas of acoustics were enlightening to a large number of fellow researchers.