Modeling the effect of palate shape on the articulatory-acoustics mapping

Articulatory variability is reduced for people with flatter palates [Bakst and Lin (2015). Proceedings of the 18th International Congress of Phonetic Sciences; Brunner, Fuchs, and Perrier (2009). J. Acoust. Soc. Am. 125(6), 3936-3949]. Brunner, Fuchs, and Perrier [(2009). J. Acoust. Soc. Am. 125(6), 3936-3949] hypothesized that this is because the mapping between articulation and acoustics depends on palate depth. Articulatory synthesis was used with three different palate shapes to generate productions of /r/. The parameter spaces of the articulatory synthesizers were searched for vocal tract configurations that result in low F3 (the hallmark acoustic cue for /r/). Palate shape influences not only the sensitivity of the articulatory-acoustic mapping, but also the effect of each individual articulatory parameter on F3.