Lesly Widner, PhD
About Me
I’m Lesly Widner, a linguist with a specialization in prosody and speech structure. My work focuses on how we use pitch, pauses, and rhythm to communicate different intentions. I’ve developed a methodology for coding these patterns to help synthetic voice systems sound more natural and human.
The guidance I offer is grounded in over 10 years of research dedicated to understanding how prosodic structure operates in spoken language.
My work presents an original model that reveals the combined effect of pitch, intensity, and duration in shaping prosodic meaning — a phenomenon that, to my knowledge, has not been described in this form by any other study.
While my research focuses on spoken Mexican Spanish, the underlying prosodic model is fully adaptable to other Western languages, offering broad applicability to TTS development across linguistic contexts.
Contact me:
📧leslywidner@siuss.in