Generating vocal tract shapes from formant frequencies

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Abstract
An algorithm that used only the first 3 formant frequencies was devised for generating vocal tract shapes as seen on midsagittal x-ray diagrams of most English vowels. The shape of the tongue was characterized in terms of the sum of 2 factors derived from PARAFAC analysis: a front raising component and a back raising component. Stepwise multiple regression techniques were used to show that the proportions of these 2 components, and of a 3rd parameter corresponding to the distance between the lips, are highly correlated with the formant frequencies in 50 vowels. The recovery algorithm developed from these correlations was tested on a number of published sets of tracings from x-ray diagrams, and appeared to be generalizable to other speakers.

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