Dr Frantz Clermont

Dr Frantz Clermont works with J P French Associates as a research scientist.  Dr Clermont has held academic posts (teaching and research) at the University of New South Wales (Australia), the University of Tsukuba (Japan), the American University of Paris (France) and the University of Lund (Sweden). He has published refereed articles in the field of speech science and technology, which have appeared in international journals and conference proceedings. He is a member of the Institute of Electrical and Electronics Engineers (IEEE), a foundation member of the Australian Speech Science and Technology Association (ASSTA), a member of the National Review Board for ASSTA, and a member of the Acoustical Society of America (ASA).

Publications

Dr Clermont is a prolific research scientist in the field and selected relevant publications are provided below:

Speech-Signal Parameterisation

acoustic-phonetic; acoustic-articulatory; acoustic-prosodic

  1. Clermont, F. (2013),
    Cepstrum-to-formant mapping of spoken vowels“, Abstract Proc. Int. Conf. Forensic Phonetics and Acoustics (IAFPA), Tampa, 22-24 July 2013.
  2. Clermont, F., Harrison, P.T. and French, J.P. (2007),
    Formant-pattern estimation guided by cepstral compatibility“, Abstract Proc. Int. Conf. Forensic Phonetics and Acoustics (IAFPA), Plymouth, 22-25 July 2007.
  3. Clermont, F. and Millhouse, T.J. (2004),
    Inexactness and robustness in cepstra-to-formant transformation of spoken and sung vowels“, Proc. 8th Int. Conf. Spoken Lang. Processing, Korea, pp. 1921-1924.
  4. Khodai-Joopari, M., Clermont, F. and Barlow, M. (2004),
    A forensically-motivated tool for selecting cepstrally-consistent steady-states from non-contemporaneous vowel utterances“, Proc. 8th Int. Conf. Spoken Lang. Processing, Korea, pp. 2393-2396.
  5. Khodai-Joopari, M. and Clermont, F. (2002),
    A comparative study of empirical formulae for estimating vowel-formant bandwidths“, Proc. 9th Australian Int. Conf. Speech Sci. & Tech., Melbourne, pp. 130-135.
  6. Barlow, M., Clermont, F. and Mokhtari, P. (2001),
    A methodology for modelling and interactively visualising the human vocal-tract in 3-D space“, Acoustics Australia, vol. 29(1), pp. 5-8.
  7. Barlow, M., Clermont, F. and Mokhtari, P. (2000),
    From acoustics of speech to a 3D vocal-tract: Towards a plausible model with real-time constraints“, Proc. 8th Australian Int. Conf. Speech Sci. & Tech., Canberra, pp. 466-471.
  8. Mokhtari, P. and Clermont, F. (2000),
    New perspectives on linear-prediction modelling of the vocal-tract: Uniqueness, formant dependence and shape parameterisation“, Proc. 8th Australian Int. Conf. Speech Sci. & Tech., Canberra, pp. 478-483.
  9. Clermont, F. (1992),
    Formant-contour parameterisation of vocalic sounds by temporally-constrained spectral matching“, Proc. 4th Australian Int. Conf. Speech Sci. & Tech., Brisbane, pp. 48-53.
  10. Hawkins, S. and Clermont, F. (1990),
    Supervised cepstrum-to-formant estimation: A new piecewise-linear model“, Proc. 3rd Australian Int. Conf. Speech Sci. & Tech., Melbourne, pp. 310-315.
  11. Broad, D.J. and Clermont, F. (1989),
    Formant estimation by linear transformation of the LPC-cepstrum“, Journal of the Acoustical Society of America, vol. 86(5), pp. 2013-2017.
  12. Clermont, F. (1988),
    Formant-contour extraction by a temporally-constrained search of the spectral resonance space“, ASA-ASJ meeting, Honolulu, Journal of the Acoustical Society of America, vol. 84, S21-S22.
  13. Lea, W.A. and Clermont. F (1984),
    Algorithms for acoustic prosodic analysis of speech“, Proc. Int. Conf. Acoustics, Speech and Signal Processing, San Diego, Secs 42.7.1-42.7.4.

Acoustic-Phonetic Analysis and Modelling

coarticulation; spoken & sung monophthongs; spoken diphthongs

  1. Clermont, F. (2012),
    Linear-scaling effects of phonetic context on vowel formants: A tutorial“, in Quantitative Approaches to Problems in Linguistics: Studies in honour of Phil Rose (Donohue, Ishihara and Steel, eds), LINCOM Studies in Phonetics 08, pp. 155-169.
  2. Clermont, F. (2010),
    A linear-scaling method for normalising vowels in various consonantal contexts“, Abstract Proc. of the 13th Int. Australasian Conf. on Speech Sci. & Tech., Melbourne, Australia, 14-16 December 2010.
  3. Broad, D. J. and Clermont, F. (2010),
    Target-locus scaling methods for modelling families of formant transitions“, Journal of Phonetics, vol. 38(3), pp. 337-359.
  4. Clermont, F. (2009),
    Linear-scaling effects of co-articulation in the vowel space“, Abstract Proc. Int. Conf. Forensic Phonetics and Acoustics (IAFPA), Cambridge, 3-5 August 2009.
  5. Broad, D.J. and Clermont, F. (2007),
    Vowel targets and consonant loci from scaling properties of formant transitions“, Proc. 16th Int. Congr. Phonetic Sciences, Saarbrücken, pp. 853-856.
  6. Millhouse, T.J. and Clermont, F. (2007),
    Acoustic analysis of a soprano’s vowels based on perceptual linear prediction“, Proc. 16th Int. Congr. Phonetic Sciences, Saarbrücken, pp. 901-904.
  7. Clermont, F. and Zetterholm, E. (2006),
    F-pattern analysis of professional imitations of “hallå” in three Swedish dialects“, Proc. 19th Swedish Phonetics Conference, 7-9 June 2006, Lund, pp. 25-27.
  8. Millhouse, T.J. and Clermont, F. (2004),
    Systematic comparison of spoken and sung vowels using perceptual linear prediction of speech“, Proc. 10th Australian Int. Conf. Speech Sci. & Tech., Sydney, pp. 283-288.
  9. Clermont, F. (2003),
    Systemic relationship between Bass singers’ spoken and sung vowel-formant spaces“, Proc. 15th Int. Congr. Phonetic Sciences, Barcelona, pp. 2115-2118.
  10. Clermont, F. (2002),
    Systemic comparison of spoken and sung vowels in formant-frequency space“, Proc. 9th Australian Int. Conf. Speech Sci. & Tech., Melbourne, pp. 124-129.
  11. Millhouse, T.J., Clermont, F. and Davis, P. (2002),
    Exploring the importance of formant bandwidths in the production of the singer’s formant“, Proc. 9th Australian Int. Conf. Speech Sci. & Tech., Melbourne, pp. 373-378.
  12. Broad, D.J. and Clermont, F. (2002),
    Linear scaling of vowel-formant ensembles (VFEs) in consonantal contexts“, Speech Communication, vol. 37(3-4), pp. 175-195.
  13. Barlow, M. and Clermont, F. (2000),
    A parametric model of Australian English vowels in formant space“, Proc. 8th Australian Int. Conf. Speech Sci. & Tech., Canberra, pp. 112-117.
  14. Barlow, M. and Clermont, F. (2000),
    Seeing is believing: beyond a static 2D view of formant space for research and education“, Proc. 8th Australian Int. Conf. Speech Sci. & Tech., Canberra, pp. 118-123.
  15. Clermont, F. and Itahashi, S. (2000),
    Static and dynamic vowels in a “cepstro-phonetic” subspace“, Journal of the Acoustical Society of Japan, vol. 21(4), pp. 221-223.
  16. Clermont, F. and Itahashi, S. (1999),
    Monophthongal and diphthongal evidence of isomorphism between formant and cepstral spaces“, Proc. of the Spring Meeting of the Acoust. Soc. of Japan, pp. 206-207.
  17. Clermont, F. (1993),
    Spectro-temporal description of diphthongs in F1-F2-F3 space“, Speech Communication, vol. 13, pp. 377-390.
  18. Clermont, F. (1992),
    Characterisation of the diphthongal sound beyond the F1-F2 plane“, Proc. 4th Australian Conf. Speech Sci. & Tech., Brisbane, pp. 298-303.
  19. Clermont, F. (1988),
    A dual exponential model for formant trajectories of diphthongs“, Proc. 2nd Australian Int. Conf. Speech Sci. & Tech., Sydney, pp. 146-151.
  20. Broad, D.J. and Clermont, F. (1987),
    A methodology for modelling vowel formant contours in CVC context“, Journal of the Acoustical Society of America, vol. 81, pp. 155-165.
  21. Clermont, F. and Millar, J.B. (1986),
    Multi-speaker validation of coarticulation models of syllabic nuclei“, Proc. Int. Conf. Acoustics, Speech and Signal Processing, Tokyo, pp. 2671-2674.
  22. Broad, D.J. and Clermont, F. (1984),
    A superposition model for coarticulation in certain CVC utterances“, Journal of the Acoustical Society of America, vol. 76, S14-15.

Speech/Speaker Recognition

sources of variability; methods; multi-speaker data; acoustic & articulatory findings

  1. Clermont, F. (2011),
    Speaker-variance ratios in forensically-realistic vowel formant data: Normalising for consonantal context“, Abstract Proc. Int. Conf. Forensic Phonetics & Acoustics (IAFPA), Vienna, 24-27 July 2011.
  2. Clermont, F., French, J.P., Harrison, P.T. and Simpson, S. (2008),
    Population data for English spoken in England: A modest first step“, Abstract Proc. Int. Conf. Forensic Phonetics & Acoustics (IAFPA), Lausanne, 21-23 July 2008.
  3. Clermont, F. (2007),
    A linear-scaling approach to speaker variability in poly-segmental formant ensembles” in Speaker Classification (Mueller, ed.), Springer-Verlag, pp. 116-129.
  4. Clermont, F. and Zetterholm, E. (2006),
    Acoustic-articulatory interpretations of professional imitations of “hallå” in three Swedish dialects“, Abstract Proc. Int. Conf. Forensic Phonetics & Acoustics (IAFPA), Gothenburg, 23-26 July 2006.
  5. Clermont, F. (2004),
    Inter-speaker scaling of poly-segmental formant ensembles“, Proc. 10th Australian Int. Conf. Speech Sci. & Tech., Sydney, pp. 124-129.
  6. Khodai-Joopari, M., Clermont, F. and Barlow, M. (2004),
    Speaker variability on a continuum of spectral sub-bands from 297-speakers’ non-contemporaneous cepstra of Japanese vowels“, Proc. 10th Australian Int. Conf. Speech Sci. & Tech., Sydney, pp. 504-509.
  7. Rose, P. and Clermont, F. (2001),
    Comparison of two acoustic methods of forensic speaker identification“, Acoustics Australia, vol. 29(1), pp. 31-35.
  8. Mokhtari, P., Clermont, F. and Tanaka, K. (2000),
    Toward an acoustic-articulatory model of inter-speaker variability“, Proc. 6th Int. Conf. Spoken Language Processing, vol. II, pp. 158-161.
  9. Rose, P. and Clermont, F. (2000),
    Comparative performance of cepstrum- and formant-based analysis on similar-sounding speakers for forensic speaker identification“, Proc. 8th Australian Int. Conf. Speech Sci. & Tech., Canberra, pp. 172-177.
  10. Clermont, F. (1999),
    Invited review of M.R. Schroeder’s (1999) book entitled Computer Speech Recognition, Compression, Synthesis (Springer-Verlag), published in Acoustics Australia 27(3): p. 102.
  11. Clermont, F. and Mokhtari, P. (1998),
    Acoustic-articulatory evaluation of the upper vowel-formant region and its presumed speaker-specific potency“, Proc. 5th Int. Conf. Spoken Language Processing, Sydney, vol. 2, pp. 527-530.
  12. Sampath, S. and Clermont, F. (1997),
    Vowel formant variability in spontaneous speech of native and non-native speakers of Australian English“, Proc. 2nd Int. Conf. Speech Processing, Seoul, vol. 1, pp. 119-124.
  13. Clermont, F. (1996),
    Multi-speaker formant data on the Australian English vowels: A tribute to J.R.L Bernard’s (1967) pioneering research“, Proc. 6th Australian Int. Conf. Speech Sci. & Tech., Adelaide, pp. 145-150.
  14. Mokhtari, P. and Clermont, F. (1996),
    A methodology for investigating vowel-speaker interactions in the acoustic-phonetic domain“, Proc. 6th Australian Int. Conf. Speech Sci. & Tech., Adelaide, pp. 127-132.
  15. Clermont, F. and Broad, D.J. (1995),
    Back-Front classification of English vowels using a cepstrum-to-formant model“, Journal of the Acoustical Soc. of America, vol. 98(5), p. 2966.
  16. Clermont, F. and Mokhtari, P. (1994),
    Frequency-band specification in cepstral distance computation“, Proc. 5th Australian Int. Conf. Speech Sci. & Tech., Perth, vol. 1, pp. 354-359.
  17. Mokhtari, P. and Clermont, F. (1994),
    Contributions of selected spectral regions to vowel classification accuracy“, Proc. Int. Conf. Spoken Language Processing, Yokohama, pp. 1923-1926.
  18. Cooper, C. and Clermont, F. (1994),
    Investigation of the speaker factor in vowel nuclei“, Proc. 5th Australian Int. Conf. Speech Sci. & Tech., Perth, vol. 1, pp. 368-373.
  19. Clermont, F. and Butler, S.J. (1988),
    Prosodically-guided methods for nearest-neighbour classification of syllables“, Proc. 2nd Australian Int. Conf. Speech Sci. & Tech., Sydney, pp. 216-221.
  20. Butler, S.J. and Clermont, F. (1988),
    On the asymptotic performance of nearest-neighbour classifiers in speech recognition“, Proc. 2nd Australian Int. Conf. Speech Sci. & Tech., Sydney, pp. 222-226.