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B. Pompino-Marschall
ZAS Papers in Linguistics 40, 2005: 145-159 145
Von Kempelen et al. –
Remarks on the history of articulatory-acoustic modelling
Bernd Pompino-Marschall
Humboldt-Universität zu Berlin
and
ZAS Berlin
The contribution of von Kempelen’s “Mechanism of Speech” to the ‘phonetic
sciences‘ will be analyzed with respect to his theoretical reasoning on speech and
speech production on the one hand and on the other in connection with his
practical insights during his struggle in constructing a speaking machine.
Whereas in his theoretical considerations von Kempelen’s view is focussed on the
natural functioning of the speech organs – cf. his membraneous glottis model – in
constructing his speaking machine he clearly orientates himself towards the
auditory result – cf. the bag pipe model for the sound generator used for the
speaking machine instead. Concerning vowel production his theoretical
description remains questionable, but his practical insight that vowels and speech
sounds in general are only perceived correctly in connection with their
surrounding sounds – i.e. the discovery of coarticulation – is clearly a milestone in
the development of the phonetic sciences: He therefore dispenses with the
Kratzenstein tubes, although they might have been based on more thorough
acoustic modelling.
Finally, von Kempelen’s model of speech production will be discussed in relation
to the discussion of the acoustic nature of vowels afterwards [Willis and
Wheatstone as well as von Helmholtz and Hermann in the 19th century and
Stumpf, Chiba & Kajiyama as well as Fant and Ungeheuer in the 20th century].
1. The person
Wolfgang von Kempelen (1734-1804), civil servant – in later years in the rank
of a privy councillor – at the Royal Hungarian Court at Preßburg (today’s
Bratislava), protégé of Maria Theresa, is present in public memory foremost
because of his geniously constructed chess playing ‘Turk’ (although it was
based on deception), an ‘automaton’ that defeated – among others – the Russian
146
empress, Catherine the Great, at this royal game (cf. Figure 2). Napoleon’s
stepson, Prince Eugène de Beauharnais, later bought this ‘machine’ (but, alas,
without the chess champion hidden inside).
Figure 1: Self portrait of Wolfang von Kempelen
(charcoal drawing; Szépmüvészeti Múzeum, Budapest) and signature
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B. Pompino-Marschall
ZAS Papers in Linguistics 40, 2005: 145-159 147
But, typical son of his times, Wolfgang von Kempelen was a multitalented
person, experimenting in quite different fields of science and engineering.
Figure 2: The chess playing ‘Turk’ as shown from front before the game after the engravings
accompanying the “Letters …” of Windisch (1783b)
In focus here is his interest in the mechanism of human speech to which
Kempelen dedicated a whole book, “The Mechanism of Human Speech
Including the Description of His Speaking Machine” published on demand1 in a
German-French parallel edition of together 195 copies2 in 1791 (cf. Figure 3).
Brücke (1856: 6) – German ‘Lautphysiologe’ (speech physiologist) and one of
the founders of modern phonetics – clearly recommends this book of Kempelen
1 Cf. the bookseller’s 1789 announcement of the publication of the “Mechanism ...” in
Figure 3.
2 At least according to the list of subscribers in the German edition. The German edition is
set in black letters, the French edition in Roman type letters.
148
“to all linguists interested in the purely mechanical part of the theory of speech
sounds.”
2. The construction of the speaking machine
In his “Mechanism …” Kempelen himself tells us about the long time he needed
to construct his speaking machine: “I can‘t tell exactly what forced me to imitate
human speech. But I remember that already during my work on the chess player
[cf. Figure 2] in 1769 I was eager to find musical instruments resembling the
human voice.” (Kempelen 1791: 389f.; my translation). His starting point thus
was that human speech can be nothing but vibrating air since it is obvious that
we breathe for speaking and while exhaling the air is set in motion by the voice
membrane.
In his book he then continues to describe how by chance he got hold of the
mouthpiece of a shepherd’s bagpipe (cf. Figure 4) that sounded to him like a
singing child. This kind of mouthpiece as a first step was used by him as a sound
generator in an unfinished ‘vox humana’ organ he bought. For this kind of
machine he went on to construct different variable resonators that could be
controlled by pressing the keys of a keyboard (cf. Figure 5). He notes some
difficulties with the vowel /i/, but since he had then already reached the
conclusion that although it would be possible to construct a ‘vox humana’ for
single speech sounds it wouldn’t be possible to concatenate these sounds into
syllables he was no longer interested in learning more about the Kratzenstein
tubes (cf. Figure 6).
The leading ideas behind his approach at a speaking machine at this times can be
summarized as following:
• Since speech sounds are only discernable in relation to one another you have
to use a single glottis and a single mouth.
• The mouth and tongue are in continuous motion producing obstacles for the
sounding (!) air.
• And since it is almost mathematically proven that
speech = voice passing through openings
it follows that
for a speaking machine you need nothing else but
• a lung
• a glottis
• and a mouth.
B. Pompino-Marschall
ZAS Papers in Linguistics 40, 2005: 145-159 149
Figure 3: Title page (left) and bookseller’s announcement (1789) of Kempelen’s
“Mechanism …” (1791a)
Figure 4: Kempelen’s drawing of a Hungarian bagpipe (epigraph to an occasional poem
dedicated to Magdalena von Wiesenthal in his family book “Gedichte. von W. v. K.”
[Lyrics. of W. v. K.]; 1757 ff.; National Hungarian Library)
150
Figure 5: Kempelen’s ‘vox humana’ trial
Figure 6: Kratzenstein’s vowel tubes (after Panconcelli-Calzia, 1940)
B. Pompino-Marschall
ZAS Papers in Linguistics 40, 2005: 145-159 151
In 1778, according to Bois-Reymond (1862: 129), Kempelen (partially)
successfully finished the construction of his speaking machine. Clearly
documented in the newspaper literature of that time, 1782 till 1784 Wolfgang
von Kempelen was granted a sabbatical by Joseph II during which he undertook
a European journey exhibiting both of his ‘automata’. He went through Switzer-
land, stayed in Paris, went on to London and visiting the German fairs at
Frankfurt, Dresden and Leipzig on his way back to Hungary, always
accompanied by the letters of his friend Karl Gottlieb von Windisch (1783a, b,
c, 1784).
The first picture of the machine – more complicated than the one of the
“Mechanism ...” (cf. Figure 8) – is given by Hindenburg (1784; cf. Figure 7).
3. Kempelen: Observer vs. engineer
Taking a closer look to his “Mechanism ...” one can see Kempelen’s twofold
interest in language and speech production as a natural process on the one hand
and the engineering task of building a speaking machine whose output sounds
like human speech on the other hand.
In describing the phonatory functions of the larynx e.g. he developed a far more
realistic membranous glottis model (cf. Figure 10) in contrast to the bagpipe
mouthpiece that he used as sound generator in his speaking machine (cf. Figure
8, above left). Comparing the intermediate machine of Figure 7 – and the one at
the “Deutsches Museum”, Munich (cf. Figure 9) – with the one of the
“Mechanism ...” one can also see that Kempelen discards additions that he could
not handle correctly: One of these pieces is the small wire at the mouthpiece’s
tongue that eventually should control pitch variation.
Kempelen also makes suggestions how to construct a mechanical tongue (cf.
Figure 11) instead of only changing the resonance characteristics by (partly)
closing the rubber mouth or putting the fingers of his left hand inside. But he
leaves it at this since he has problems with the audible burst for plosives then.
4. Kempelen and the theory of acoustic articulation
Kempelen didn’t construct his speaking machine on the base of acoustic theories
but went the engineering way of analysis-by-synthesis – or trial and error. He
was mainly interested in the audible result that should be reached by a simple
mechanism as close as possible to our articulatory apparatus on the one hand
and playable like a musical instrument on the other.
152
Figure 7: The first picture of the speaking machine (Hindenburg, 1784)
Kratzenstein, inspired by Euler on the other hand, tried to find his way into the
nature of vowels through geometric-acoustic considerations based on reflections
within elliptical cones (cf. Figure 12) although these were wrong and the tubes
he finally used didn’t resemble these constructions very much (cf. Figure 6).
B. Pompino-Marschall
ZAS Papers in Linguistics 40, 2005: 145-159 153
Figure 8: The machine of the “Mechanism ...”
(anonymous review of 1792)
Figure 9: Kempelen’s speaking machine at the “Deutsches Museum”, Munich
154
Figure 10: Kempelen’s membranous
glottis model
Figure 11: Kempelen’s possible solution
for a mechanical tongue for lingual stop
production
B. Pompino-Marschall
ZAS Papers in Linguistics 40, 2005: 145-159 155
Figure 12: Kratzenstein‘s geometric-acoustic considerations based on reflections within
elliptical cones (after Gessinger 1994)
Kempelen only once in his “Mechanism ...” gets deeper into vowel acoustics (cf.
Figure 13).
He classifies the vowels according to the width of the lip channel giving a
ranking of A > E > I > O > U and the width of the so called tongue channel that
can be interpreted as horizontal tongue position. Kempelen goes on to remark
that although he tried to produce the different vowels at the same pitch the
vowel with a smaller tongue channel seemed to be higher in pitch. Although
Kempelen isn’t very explicit here, the observation clearly resembles the
perceptual analysis of the second formant in whispered vowels described a
century before by Reyher (1679; as cited in Kohler, 2000; cf. Figure 14) and the
vowel tunes of von Helmholtz (1862; cf. Figure 15)
In 1830 it was Willis, starting from the ideas of Kratzenstein and von Kempelen,
who first gained reasonable insight in the resonating properties of neutral tubes
that would be able to give the illusion of different vowels (cf. Figure 16). In
1838 Wheatstone who also rebuilt Kempelen’s machine added the theory of
multiple resonance. During the 19th and part of the 20th century there existed
allegedly contradictory theories on the nature of vowel sounds: On the one hand
there was the harmonic theory stating that vowel frequencies have to be simple
multiples of the fundamental frequency (Wheatstone, Helmholtz; Stumpf, Fant)
and cavity tone theories (Willis, Hermann; Chiba & Kajiyama, Ungeheuer) that
denied this. Today we know that harmonic analysis and resonance analysis are
not real contradictions to one another but are merely two sides of the same coin.
But a thorough theory of acoustic articulation (without simplifications) is still
missing.
Kempelen’s “Mechanism ...” is therefore a milestone in the history of phonetics,
incorporating many insightful observations on articulatory mechanisms, whereas
the speaking machine clearly a milestone in audio engineering.
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156
Figure 13: Kempelen’s vowel
categorisation according to the width
of the tongue channel and the lip
channel
Figure 14: Whispered vowel tunes of
Reyer (1679; after Kohler 2000)
Figure 15: Vowel resonances after
Helmholtz (1862)
B. Pompino-Marschall
ZAS Papers in Linguistics 40, 2005: 145-159 157
Figure 16: The experimental set-up of Willis (1832)
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Acknowlegements
I wish to thank Gordon Ramsay for his considerable help on an earlier version of
this paper.
References
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ZAS Papers in Linguistics 40, 2005: 145-159 159
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