Abstract
The Converter/Distributor (C/D) model (Fujimura 2000) provides a comprehensive and explicit framework to model how the phonological, prosodic organization is mapped onto actual speech production. The goal of this paper is (i) to walk readers through how to construct the prosodic representations of the C/D model from actual articulation data, and (ii) discuss some crucial concepts of the C/D model. Some basic hypotheses of the C/D model are (1) phonological syllable magnitude increases with increased sentence stress, (2) amount of jaw displacement is the articulatory correlate of syllable magnitude, (3) phonological syllable timing is calculated from speed patterns of the crucial articulators of onset and coda consonants, and (4) once syllable magnitude and syllable timing are determined, we can automatically calculate phonological phrasing patterns, with phrase boundaries which come with predicted durational values. All of these computational aspects of the C/D model can and should be tested empirically. In this paper, we attempt to explain and discuss these aspects of the C/D model in detail, especially for those readers who are not already familiar with the model.
