The effects of speaking rate on formant transitions in French synthesis-by-rule

Toward the objective of higher quality French synthetic speech by rule. 181 phonetically-diverse words spoken at three speaking rates were analyzed for formant patterns and durations. Examples of formant undershoot of vowel targets due to coarticulation or increased speaking rate occurred only when large formant excursions were needed between vowels and adjacent consonants. Increased rate led to faster formant transitions, but not, in general, to changes in the extent of the transitions. Undershoot occurred more often in semivowels, especially at the fast speaking rate. Formant transitions were largely independent of the number and position of syllables in a word, although vowel duration was much longer in a word-final syllable than word-internally.