ISCA Archive Interspeech 2020
ISCA Archive Interspeech 2020

Finding Intelligible Consonant-Vowel Sounds Using High-Quality Articulatory Synthesis

Daniel R. van Niekerk, Anqi Xu, Branislav Gerazov, Paul K. Krug, Peter Birkholz, Yi Xu

In this study, a state-of-the-art articulatory speech synthesiser was used as the basis for simulating the exploration of CV sounds imitating speech stimuli. By adopting a relevant kinematic model and systematically reducing the search space of consonant articulatory targets, intelligible CV sounds can be found. Derivative-free optimisation strategies were evaluated to speed up the process of exploring articulatory space and the possibility of using automatic speech recognition as a means of evaluating intelligibility was explored.