Elaine Y L Tsiang

Elaine Y L Tsiang

We propose a physical model of speech to explain its precision and robustness. We begin by reducing the dynamics to the bare minimum of polygonal billiards. The symbolic stability of the billiard trajectories against variations in action and the oral cavity geometry forms the basis for precision and robustness in articulation. This stability survives forcing and dissipation to underpin reliable encoding of the trajectories into acoustic emissions. The kinematics of oral billiards and the cyclical nature of the forcing mechanism engender a grammar of the syllable independent of any language. The symbolic dynamics of oral billiards is rendered nearly maximally observable by their concomitant acoustic emissions. Speech recognition is the set of computations on the sub-maximally informative acoustic observables from which the symbolic dynamics of oral billiards may be inferred.

Elaine Y L Tsiang

We define an alphabet, the IHA, of the 10-D phonetic-prosodic space. The dimensions of this space are perceptual observables, rather than articulatory specifications. Speech is defined as a random chain in time of the 4-D phonetic subspace, that is, a symbolic sequence, augmented with diacritics of the remaining 6-D prosodic subspace. The definitions here are based on the model of speech of oral billiards, and supersedes an earlier version. This paper only enumerates the IHA in detail as a supplement to the exposition of oral billiards in a separate paper. The IHA has been implemented as the target random variable in a speech recognizer.