Detection of symbolic gestural events in articulatory data for use in structural representations of continuous speech

One of the crucial issues which often needs to be addressed in structural approaches to speech representation is the choice of fundamental symbolic units of representation. In this paper, a physiologically inspired methodology for defining these symbolic atomic units in terms of primitive articulatory events is proposed. It is shown how the atomic articulatory events (gestures) can be detected directly in the articulatory data. An algorithm for evaluating the reliability of the articulatory events is described and promising results of the experiments conducted on the MOCHA articulatory database are presented.