Search results for "Speech Acoustics"
showing 10 items of 12 documents
Measures of native and non-native rhythm in a quantity language.
2005
The traditional phonetic classification of language rhythm as stress-timed or syllable-timed is attributed to Pike. Recently, two different proposals have been offered for describing the rhythmic structure of languages from acoustic-phonetic measurements. Ramus has suggested a metric based on the proportion of vocalic intervals and the variability ( SD) of consonantal intervals. Grabe has proposed Pairwise Variability Indices (nPVI, rPVI) calculated from the differences in vocalic and consonantal durations between successive syllables. We have calculated both the Ramus and Grabe metrics for Latvian, traditionally considered a syllable rhythm language, and for Latvian as spoken by Russian l…
Human voice pitch measures are robust across a variety of speech recordings: methodological and theoretical implications
2021
Fundamental frequency ( f o ), perceived as voice pitch, is the most sexually dimorphic, perceptually salient and intensively studied voice parameter in human nonverbal communication. Thousands of studies have linked human f o to biological and social speaker traits and life outcomes, from reproductive to economic. Critically, researchers have used myriad speech stimuli to measure f o and infer its functional relevance, from individual vowels to longer bouts of spontaneous speech. Here, we acoustically analysed f o in nearly 1000 affectively neutral speech utterances (vowels, words, counting, greetings, read paragraphs and free spontaneous speech) produced by the same 154 men and women, ag…
Automatic and controlled processing of acoustic and phonetic contrasts
2003
Changes in the temporal properties of the speech signal provide important cues for phoneme identification. An impairment or inability to detect such changes may adversely affect one's ability to understand spoken speech. The difference in meaning between the Finnish words tuli (fire) and tuuli (wind), for example, lies in the difference between the duration of the vowel /u/. Detecting changes in the temporal properties of the speech signal, therefore, is critical for distinguishing between phonemes and identifying words. In the current study, we tested whether detection of changes in speech sounds, in native Finnish speakers, would vary as a function of the position within the word that the…
Evaluation of Support in Singing
2005
Summary This study searched for perceptual, acoustic, and physiological correlates of support in singing. Seven trained professional singers (four women and three men) sang repetitions of the syllable [pa:] at varying pitch and sound levels (1) habitually (with support) and (2) simulating singing without support. Estimate of subglottic pressure was obtained from oral pressure during [p]. Vocal fold vibration was registered with dual-channel electroglottography. Acoustic analyses were made on the recorded samples. All samples were also evaluated by the singers and other listeners, who were trained singers, singing students, and voice specialists without singing education (a total of 63 liste…
The role of animacy in the real time comprehension of Mandarin Chinese: Evidence from auditory event-related brain potentials.
2007
Two auditory ERP studies examined the role of animacy in sentence comprehension in Mandarin Chinese by comparing active and passive sentences in simple verb-final (Experiment 1) and relative clause constructions (Experiment 2). In addition to the voice manipulation (which modulated the assignment of actor and undergoer roles to the arguments), both arguments were either animate or inanimate. This allowed us to examine the interplay of animacy with thematic interpretation. In Experiment 1, we observed no effect of animacy at NP1, but N400 effects for inanimate actor arguments in second position. This result mirrors previous findings in German, thus suggesting that an initial undergoer univer…
(De-)Accentuation and the Processing of Information Status: Evidence from Event-Related Brain Potentials
2012
The paper reports on a perception experiment in German that investigated the neuro-cognitive processing of information structural concepts and their prosodic marking using event-related brain potentials (ERPs). Experimental conditions controlled the information status (given vs. new) of referring and non-referring target expressions (nouns vs. adjectives) and were elicited via context sentences, which did not – unlike most previous ERP studies in the field – trigger an explicit focus expectation. Target utterances displayed prosodic realizations of the critical words which differed in accent position and accent type. Electrophysiological results showed an effect of information status, maxi…
Differences in sensory processing of German vowels and physically matched non-speech sounds as revealed by the mismatch negativity (MMN) of the human…
2014
We compared processing of speech and non-speech by means of the mismatch negativity (MMN). For this purpose, the MMN elicited by vowels was compared to those elicited by two non-speech stimulus types: spectrally rotated vowels, having the same stimulus complexity as the speech stimuli, and sounds based on the bands of formants of the vowels, representing non-speech stimuli of lower complexity as compared to the other stimulus types. This design allows controlling for effects of stimulus complexity when comparing neural correlates of processing speech to non-speech. Deviants within a modified multi-feature design differed either in duration or spectral property. Moreover, the difficulty to d…
Acoustical analysis of Spanish vowels produced by laryngectomized subjects.
2001
The purpose of this study was to describe the acoustic characteristics of Spanish vowels in subjects who had undergone a total laryngectomy and to compare the results with those obtained in a control group of subjects who spoke normally. Our results are discussed in relation to those obtained in previous studies with English-speaking laryngectomized patients. The comparison between English and Spanish, which differ widely in the size of their vowel inventories, will help us to determine specific or universal vowel production characteristics in these patients. Our second objective was to relate the acoustic properties of these vowels to the perceptual data obtained in our previous work (J. L…
The effect of MPEG audio compression on multidimensional set of voice parameters
2002
The MPEG-1 Layer 3 compression schema of audio signal, or commonly known as mp3, has caused a great impact in recent years as it has reached high compression rates while also conserving a high sound quality. Previous listening tests have shown that music and speech samples compressed at high bitrates are virtually indistinguishable from the original samples, but very little is known about how compression acoustically affects the voice signal. In Experiment 1 the spectral composition of original and compressed speech signals were analyzed by means of the Long-Term Average Spectrum using the Computerized Speech Laboratory (Kay Elemetrics Corp. (Pine Brook, NJ, USA)). In Experiment 2 a set of …
Alterations in speech and voice in patients with mucopolysaccharidoses.
2013
The mucopolysaccharidoses are a group of lysosomal disorders characterized by abnormal accumulation of glycosaminoglycans within cell lysosomes leading to a variety of signs and symptoms including alterations in speech and voice production. These changes were analysed in 44 patients with mucopolysaccharidosis (MPS) types I, II, and VI using standardized protocols. Compared to healthy individuals the diadochokinetic rate for the fast repetition of syllables was slower and more irregular, the voice-onset time for the voiceless consonant /p/ was shorter, and most patients had a hoarse voice. The fundamental frequency (F0) of sustained spoken vowels was in the normal range for most women and ch…