IGNATIUS G. MATTINGLY

1.  INTRODUCTION

The linguist today, and more especially the phonologist, is aware of two very active areas of investigation. One of them, generative phonology, is at the very center of his field of vision, and cannot be ignored. The other, experimental phonetics, may seem less directly relevant to his concerns, even though he accepts the truism that phonology rests ultimately on a phonetic basis. As modern experimental phonetics grows more technical, and is increasingly dominated by the psychologist, the physiologist, the electronics engineer and the speech scientist, the phonologist is more likely than ever to be put off and to yield to the temptation to do phonology on the basis of phonetic folklore.

In this situation, it is fortunate that there is a group of investigators whose efforts tend to bridge this gap: those engaged in synthesis of speech by rule. By synthesis by rule, we mean the automatic production of audible synthetic speech from a symbolic transcription, by a process which models phonetic and phonological rules in some nontrivial way. With the help of modern electronic technology, it is now perfectly possible to type a transcription on a computer typewriter and immediately hear the corresponding utterance. But the investigator who undertakes synthesis by rule not only makes use of advanced technical facilities, he also attempts of necessity to integrate and generalize into a system those findings of experimental phonetics which are relevant to phonology. On this account, at least, synthesis by rule should intrigue the phonologist.

We believe that there are other reasons as well why the phonologist should be interested, and we shall try to make them clear below. We shall also say a little about the techniques of speech synthesis, give some account of the development of synthesis by rule, describe a number of current approaches to the task, and finally, suggest some possible directions which this work may take in the future.