The surface articulation of an underlying phoneme commonly fluctuates depending on the context. For instance, the associated acoustic cues for a /t/ phoneme produced at the beginning of an utterance may be distinct from the acoustic cues of a /t/ phoneme that is preceded and followed by a vowel. Thus, for an individual speaker or speaker group, we can investigate what specific phonemic contexts result in the associated acoustic cues to be produced. An algorithm has been developed which matches a target phoneme to its corresponding acoustic cues. For a given database, we can recover all of the contexts in which a phoneme was produced and tabulate the various acoustic cue production patterns that arose. Lastly, we label these patterns by their speech production type (e.g., standard production, flapping, etc.) and produce an output in the form of a Cue Production Profile. As a result, this profile would allow for the association of a set of acoustic cues in specific phonemic contexts for an individual speaker or speaker group, such as speakers from a specific dialect region. The algorithm can also be expanded to include prosodic cues to account for how stress and intonation can affect phoneme production.

I am participating in this SuperUROP because I am eager to pursue research in an area that combines my two major interests- language and technology. I have been with the Speech Communication group for two years, so I am excited to continue working with them under this new research position. By the end of the program, I hope to publish a paper and present my results at a conference.