Probing Human Articulatory Constraints in End-to-End TTS with Reverse and Mismatched Speech-Text Directions

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Main Authors: Khadse, Parth, Kopparapu, Sunil Kumar
Format: Preprint
Published: 2026
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author Khadse, Parth
Kopparapu, Sunil Kumar
author_facet Khadse, Parth
Kopparapu, Sunil Kumar
contents An end-to-end (e2e) text-to-speech (TTS) system is a deep architecture that learns to associate a text string with acoustic speech patterns from a curated dataset. It is expected that all aspects associated with speech production, such as phone duration, speaker characteristics, and intonation among other things are captured in the trained TTS model to enable the synthesized speech to be natural and intelligible. Human speech is complex, involving smooth transitions between articulatory configurations (ACs). Due to anatomical constraints, some ACs are challenging to mimic or transition between. In this paper, we experimentally study if the constraints imposed by human anatomy have an implication on training an e2e-TTS systems. We experiment with two e2e-TTS architectures, namely, Tacotron-2 an autoregressive model and VITS-TTS a non-autoregressive model. In this study, we build TTS systems using (a) forward text, forward speech (conventional, e2e-TTS), (b) reverse text, reverse speech (r-e2e-TTS), and (c) reverse text, forward speech (rtfs-e2e-TTS). Experiments demonstrate that e2e-TTS systems are purely data-driven. Interestingly, the generated speech by r-e2e-TTS systems exhibits better fidelity, better perceptual intelligibility, and better naturalness
format Preprint
id arxiv_https___arxiv_org_abs_2602_14664
institution arXiv
publishDate 2026
record_format arxiv
spellingShingle Probing Human Articulatory Constraints in End-to-End TTS with Reverse and Mismatched Speech-Text Directions
Khadse, Parth
Kopparapu, Sunil Kumar
Sound
An end-to-end (e2e) text-to-speech (TTS) system is a deep architecture that learns to associate a text string with acoustic speech patterns from a curated dataset. It is expected that all aspects associated with speech production, such as phone duration, speaker characteristics, and intonation among other things are captured in the trained TTS model to enable the synthesized speech to be natural and intelligible. Human speech is complex, involving smooth transitions between articulatory configurations (ACs). Due to anatomical constraints, some ACs are challenging to mimic or transition between. In this paper, we experimentally study if the constraints imposed by human anatomy have an implication on training an e2e-TTS systems. We experiment with two e2e-TTS architectures, namely, Tacotron-2 an autoregressive model and VITS-TTS a non-autoregressive model. In this study, we build TTS systems using (a) forward text, forward speech (conventional, e2e-TTS), (b) reverse text, reverse speech (r-e2e-TTS), and (c) reverse text, forward speech (rtfs-e2e-TTS). Experiments demonstrate that e2e-TTS systems are purely data-driven. Interestingly, the generated speech by r-e2e-TTS systems exhibits better fidelity, better perceptual intelligibility, and better naturalness
title Probing Human Articulatory Constraints in End-to-End TTS with Reverse and Mismatched Speech-Text Directions
topic Sound
url https://arxiv.org/abs/2602.14664