Deriving vowel-to-vowel transitions with the Apex articulatory model

Formant transitions, i.e., how formant frequencies change over time, carry much of the information conveyed in both speech and singing. As formant fre quencies ar controlled by the positions of the articulators in the vocal tr act, formant transitions correspond to articulatory movements. The purpose of the present study was to explore the potential of an articulatory model to interpret formant frequency data of Swedish V1V2 sequences in terms of a rticulatory movements. The strategy was to generate articulatory pathways f or 2 V1V2 pairs, V = [i][D][u], using the APEX articulatory model (Lindblom & Sundberg, 1971; Start et al., 1996, 1999). The acoustic characteristics associated with these pathways were then compared with those observed in ut terances produced by a Swedish speaker. The results for [ui] and [Di] sugge st that the articulatory pathways between these vowels are realized via and slight tongue deactivation.