Estimation of minimum oral tract constriction area in sibilant fricatives from aerodynamic data

Abstract

Speech screening of sibilant fricative phonemes is an important tool for oral health care. Nevertheless, screening as a function of quantitative geometrical markers is mostly limited to teeth features whereas the minimum area of the narrowed air passage upstream from the tooth is known to be a key production feature. The minimum area is estimated from non-invasive aerodynamic measurements using a laminar flow model. The influence of viscid flow losses on the area estimation is shown to be negligible. Current data suggest that speech screening is most effective for phoneme /s/, which supports common practice in oral health care.