Speech as a Sound Source

Abstract

[1st page]1. What is the sound source for speech? Speech is one of the most salient and important sound sources for the human listener. As with many other natural sound sources, a listener can localize the direction from which a signal originated and can even determine some of the physical characteristics of the sound-producing object and event. But the real value of the speech signal lies not just in where the sound came from or by whom the sound was created, but in the linguistic message that it carries. The intended message of the speaker is the real sound source of speech and the ability of listeners to apprehend this message in spite of varying talker and communication characteristics is the focus of this chapter.This is not to say that the “where” and “by whom” questions related to the speech sound source are inconsequential. Localizing a speaker can be important for the segregation of their speech stream from competing speakers or noise (see Darwin, Chapter 7). Given the continuously varying nature of the speech signal, the segregation of speech from a particular talker is non-trivial and there is a long history of research into this problem (see Hafter and Sarampalis, Chapter 4; Carlyon and Gockel, Chapter 9). In