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The phonetic interpretation of headed phonological structures containing overlapping constituents*

Published online by Cambridge University Press:  20 October 2008

John Coleman
John Coleman
Affiliation:
AT&T Bell Laboratories
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In this paper I shall present a theory of phonetic interpretation of headed phonological representations. The phonological representations in question are non-segmental, hierarchical, graphical objects similar to those in common use in autosegmental, metrical, dependency and ‘government and charm’ phonology, although the details of the phonological formalism I employ are different in some respects from each of these. The theory of phonetic interpretation is based on a parametric, dynamic model of phonetic representation. The distinction between ‘head’ and ‘non-head’ constituents is central to the phonetic interpretation model. As well as being formally explicit, I have developed a computational implementation of this theory, constituting a novel speech synthesis program, ‘YorkTalk’. Consequently, although the theory, like any other, is likely to contain certain faults, it goes beyond pencil-and-paper phonological theories, in that it is capable of algorithmically generating quite natural-sounding speech-like signals of a superior quality to other methods of generating synthetic speech, albeit only for isolated words.

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Phonology , Volume 9 , Issue 1 , May 1992, pp. 1 - 44
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Copyright © Cambridge University Press 1992

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