Compensating for vowel coarticulation in continuous speech recognition

Seven English monothong vowels were studied in continuous sentences. The purpose of the study was to determine what methods are likely to be successful in compensating for coarticulation in all vowel and consonantal contexts. A method by Kuwahara has been examined in detail. The Kuwahara compensation improves the separation of the vowel regions in a space composed of the first and second formant. Important issues are where to measure the formant "target" frequencies, how to obtain good formant tracks, measuring speaking rate accurately, and how to label vowels accurately.