Page 15 - Summer2019

_ '.~:_ f ’ ’ fiiyfihiil M I if , I . or closed; a means of damping the vibration of the reed to cut
‘,1 ' ,1 /W 7 7 ';:V;'//. off voicing; a.n extra smaller side bellows that would inflate and
/ \-—-—-m-z-—.—-—-— — M then rapidly deflate as the mouth opening was closed off and
J I :.,..—-' X ' released to create air puffs for plosives; two side tubes of differ-
l , ent lengths bypassing the reed for fricatives; and, finally, a metal
/ my 7%‘ T , _ wire that could be pushed onto the reed to create a rattle resem-
l /W ’, J! j, T; ,'___ K 3 “ bling a trill The bellows were pressed with the right elbow, and
&-_//n l ‘ the levers and openings on the top of the main box were oper-
l ated with the right hand to control the secondary modifications,
1 \ 1 while the left hand was partially inserted into the mouth tube
M M g and manipulated empiricallyto create the primary articulation
'” " l l /’ '” " [ of the sound. Modern reconstructions have shown that, in the
/ ‘ hands of a skilled operator, unrestricted whole sentences can
L y ‘ i be produced intelligibly on demand, but the perceptual quality
fl ‘ yr ‘ is far from natural, as everyone remarked at the time (Lienard,
/, ‘ ‘ 1967; Brackhane, 2011).
1
Z 5' " > l 3/ . These first two vocal tract models have been described in detail
/ 5 , elsewhere many times (e.g., Chapuis and Ge'lis, 1928; Dudley
’, I , and Tarnéczy, 1950) and are the most well-lcnown but perhaps
/ /\.\\i. , the least interesting of all the mechanical speaking machines.
‘ l ‘ Kratzenstein’s tubes reproduce isolated vowel sounds acous-
-> tically but fail to accurately simulate even the geometry of
the vocal tract, let alone the underlying physics. Kempelens
Figure 2. Krutzensteirfs five vnwel tubes far the vawel smmds u (twn speaking machine captures many of the physical mechanisms
crass sectiahs in Figs. 9, 10), c (Fig. 11), i (Fig. 12), a (Fig. 13). and u responsible for sound production in the vocal tract, albeit
(Fig. 14), excited by :1 free reed (Figs. 5-8). Krutzensteih remarks that crudely, but totally sidesteps many of the crucial issues of
the pussugefrnm a (Fig. 13) ta :4 (Fig. 14) is uchieved by the stricture articulatory timing and control by reducing the model to a pas-
nf the upper cavity. Reprnducedfram Krutzehsteih (1780). sive musical instrument that needs to be harnessed backto the
actions of a human musician. The shaping of the mouth tube,
for example, is largely provided by the operato1’s hand and can
machine, as summarized i.n his famous book (Kempelen, 1791). only be learned through a great deal of practice and listening.
After working on various pipe models like Kratzenstein, The next two models ultimately resolved these problems.
Kempelen eventually returned to analogies between music
and speech. Inspired by a rustic bagpipe, he adopted the The "Talking Heads" of the Abbé Mical
familiar model of wooden bellows, counterbalanced by a An almost exact contemporary of Kempelen, the Abbé Mical
weight, to blow air through a vibrating ivory-and-leather was an impecunious cleric, the younger son of a wealthy
reed mounted inside a box and venting through a flared family from the Dauphiné in France who ran away from the
gutta-percha tube, respectively simulating lungs, larynx, church to pursue mechanics. From 1776 to 1785, he exhib-
and mouth (Figure 3). In the process of developing his model, ited across Paris first one, then two, carved wooden “talking
he thought carefully about the relationship between the detailed heads” that produced not only single speech sounds and syl-
articulations of all the different parts of the vocal tract and the lables but also whole sentences and even an entire dialogue
phonetic contrasts that he found to be important in different (Figure 4). On his request, his invention was examined by
languages, realizing that many speech sounds can be compared the Acade'mie des Sciences, which appointed a committee
a.nd discriminated based on voicing, aspiration, frication, or of notable scientists, including Vicq d’Azyr, Laplace, and
nasality as well as the shape of the vocal tract. Accordingly, to Lavoisier, to produce a report (de Milli et al., 1784; Chapuis
the basic model he added nostril tubes that could be opened and Ge'lis, 1928; Hémardinquer, 1961).
Summer 2019 | Anouudcl Tbrlay 1 13