Articulator-based synthesis for conversational speech

The conversational constraints of text-to-speech synthesis systems are considered by permitting the human user to control the motions of stimulated articulators in a synthesized vocal track. The positions of these stimulated articulators are used to derive parameters to control a formant synthesizer. It is anticipated that use of this type of speech prosthesis will be more difficult to learn than the use of conventional communication aids, but the flexibility of this approach will be much greater. The difficulty in this approach arises because the complexity of the human interface must be limited while sufficient information must be obtained to permit synthesis of speech sounds at conversational rates. A prototype has been constructed, and experimentation and further development are discussed