EURASIP Journal on Applied Signal Processing 
Volume 2002 (2002), Issue 11, Pages 1174-1188
doi:10.1155/S1110865702206046

On the Relationship between Face Movements, Tongue Movements, and Speech Acoustics

Jintao Jiang,1 Abeer Alwan,1 Patricia A. Keating,2 Edward T. Auer Jr.,3 and Lynne E. Bernstein3

 1Electrical Engineering Department, University of California at Los Angeles, Los Angeles 90095-1594, CA, USA
2Linguistics Department, University of California at Los Angeles, Los Angeles 90095-1543, CA, USA
3Communication Neuroscience Department, House Ear Institute, Los Angeles 90057, CA, USA
Received 29 November 2001; Revised 13 May 2002

Abstract

This study examines relationships between external face movements, tongue movements, and speech acoustics for consonant-vowel (CV) syllables and sentences spoken by two male and two female talkers with different visual intelligibility ratings. The questions addressed are how relationships among measures vary by syllable, whether talkers who are more intelligible produce greater optical evidence of tongue movements, and how the results for CVs compared to those for sentences. Results show that the prediction of one data stream from another is better for C/a/ syllables than C/i/ and C/u/ syllables. Across the different places of articulation, lingual places result in better predictions of one data stream from another than do bilabial and glottal places. Results vary from talker to talker; interestingly, high rated intelligibility do not result in high predictions. In general, predictions for CV syllables are better than those for sentences.