Appeal 2007-1864
Application 10/100,717
We will not sustain the Examiner’s rejection of independent claim 1.
Hutchins discloses a system for determining articulatory parameters from
audio speech.4 To this end, certain segments of digital speech data are
selected for analysis based on predefined magnitude changes in data energy.
After transforming the selected segments to spectral data segments, they are
multiplied with a class distinction matrix 62 to provide a normalized
vectorial representation of the probability of which predefined spectral class5
the received sound falls into (i.e., the normalized probability class vector 68)
(Hutchins, col. 3, ll. 47-68; col. 4, ll. 28-37; col. 16, l. 48 - col. 17, l. 7; Fig.
6).
4 These articulatory parameters describe anatomy of the vocal tract that
produces human speech. In particular, each parameter corresponds to a
respective portion or sector of the anatomical representation. The value of
the parameter indicates the displacement or instantaneous location of the
represented anatomical portion with respect to an initial location (Hutchins,
col. 3, ll. 9-38).
In a preferred embodiment, Hutchins provides eight articulation parameters
corresponding to: (1) jaw opening (JO); (2) lip rounding (RO); (3) tongue
center height (TC); (4) tongue back horizontal position (BX); (4) tongue
back vertical position (BY); (5) tongue tip horizontal position (TX); (5)
tongue tip vertical position (TY); and (6) lower lip retraction (LL)
(Hutchins, col. 12, l. 62 - col. 13, l. 8).
5 The predefined spectral classes represent groups of similar speech
phonemes--the most basic, distinguishable units of speech in a given
language (Hutchins, col. 3, ll. 42-53; col. 14, ll. 44-55). In a preferred
embodiment, Hutchins provides six classes (Classes 0-5) corresponding to:
(1) fricatives; (2) front vowels; (3) low vowels; (4) back vowels; (5) R’s; and
(6) L and nasals (Hutchins, col. 14, ll. 50-55; col. 18, ll. 53-58). Two
additional classes (Classes 6 and 7) are designated as null classes. See class
distinction matrix example bridging columns 18 and 19 in Hutchins; see also
matrix bridging columns 21 and 22.
5
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