An overview of the physiology, physics and modeling of the sound source for vowels.

Abstract

The vibration of the vocal folds produces the primary sound source for vowels. This paper first reviews vocal fold anatomy and the kinematics associated with typical vibratory motion. A brief historical background is then presented on the basic physics of vocal fold vibration and various efforts directed at mathematical modeling of the vocal folds. Finally, a low-dimensional model is used to simulate the vocal fold vibration under various conditions of vocal tract loading. In particular, a “no-tract” case is compared to two cases in which the voice source is coupled to vocal tract area functions representing the vowels /i/ and /a/, respectively.