Speech Aerodynamics Database, Tools and Visualisation

Proceedings of the 13th Conference on Language Resources and Evaluation (LREC 2022), pages 1933–1938 Marseille, 20-25 June 2022 © European Language Resources Association (ELRA), licensed under CC-BY-NC-4.0 1933 Speech Aerodynamics Database, Tools and Visualisation Shi Yu1, Clara Ponchard1, Roland Trouville1, Sergio Hassid2, Didier Demolin1 1Laboratoire de Phon´etique et Phonologie, CNRS-UMR 7018, Universit´e Sorbonne Nouvelle Paris 3, 19 Rue des Bernardins, 75005, Paris, France 2Hˆopital Erasme, Universit´e Libre de Bruxelles, Route de Lennik 808, 1070 Bruxelles, Belgium {shi.yu, clara.ponchard, didier.demolin}@sorbonne-nouvelle.fr sergio.hassid@ulb.ac.be, roland.trouville@gmail.com Abstract Aerodynamic processes underlie the characteristics of the acoustic signal of speech sounds. The aerodynamics of speech give insights on acoustic outcome and help explain the mechanisms of speech production. This database was designed during an ARC project ”Dynamique des syst`emes phonologiques” in which the study of aerodynamic constraints on speech production was an important target. Data were recorded between 1996 and 1999 at the Erasmus Hospital (Hˆopital Erasme) of Universit´e Libre de Bruxelles, Belgium and constitute one of the few datasets available on direct measurement of subglottal pressure and other aerodynamic parameters. The goal was to obtain a substantial amount of data with simultaneous recording, in various context, of the speech acoustic signal, subglottal pressure (Ps), intraoral pressure (Po), oral airflow (Qo) and nasal airflow (Qn). This database contains recordings of 2 English, 1 Amharic, and 7 French speakers and is provided with data conversion and visualisation tools. Another aim of this project was to obtain some reference values of the aerodynamics of speech production for female and male speakers uttering different types of segments and sentences in French. Keywords: Speech Production, Aerodynamics, Subglottal pressure, Database 1. Introduction The aerodynamic process is an essential phase of speech production since it constitutes the generation of the source of speech acoustic signals. Empirical data on aerodynamic parameters of speech production remain very limited, mainly due to the difficulties of its acquisition. Aerodynamic data are important for the understanding of sound patterns in languages. To consider fundamental questions in phonetics and to resolve problems in clinical phonetics, it is crucial to understand the underlying aerodynamic processes of speech sound production. There are mainly 4 measurable aerodynamic parameters involved speech production: subglottal/intraoral pressures andin oral/nasal airflows. The difficulties of data acquisition increase when these parameters are to be recorded simultaneously with acoustic signals. The difficul- ties consist of internally the nature of aerodynamic processes and, externally the requirements of clinical and medical assistance. This database is one of the very few databases of the aerodynamics of speech production available today to the scientific community. Therefore it offers a unique opportunity for speech sci- entists to study the aerodynamics of speech production. This database was first recorded to study the produc- tion of consonants of French in different vocalic con- texts. The production of vowels with controlled fun- damental frequency was also undertaken. Later a set of French and English sentences was recorded to study various intonation and stress patterns. Finally the pro- duction of Amharic language was recorded to study language-specific aerodynamics …

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