Acoustic demonstrations of speech production

Human speech production involves multiple complicated processes at different levels. Even simplified explanations of how we phonate and articulate often become barriers to understanding these topics for people who study them. For more than 25 years, we have been developing different ways of demonstrating related topics including physical models of human phonation and articulation. They are, for example, lung models, sound sources simulating vocal fold vibration, and vocal-tract models. Selecting a subset of the models and combining them together provides a suitable educational tool for each specific theme. These themes are wide ranging, from breathing mechanisms, the source and filter issues of speech production, including their interactions, quantal theory, through to the dynamic aspects of speech production. By utilizing these tools, we have also proposed an educational program on acoustics for students studying speech and hearing, speech science, and acoustic phonetics [Arai, JASA, 152(5), 2746–2757, (2022)]. Thus, acoustic demonstrations of speech production enhance studying and teaching these topics in more helpful ways. [Work supported by JSPS KAKENHI Grant No. 24K06423.]