Making accurate formant measurements: an empirical investigation of the influence of the measurement tool, analysis settings and speaker on formant measurements

The aim of this thesis is to provide guidance and information that will assist forensic speech scientists, and phoneticians generally, in making more accurate formant measurements, using commonly available speech analysis tools. Formant measurements are an important speech feature that are often examined in forensic casework, and are used widely in many other areas within the field of phonetics. However, the performance of software currently used by analysts has not been subject to detailed investigation. This thesis reports on a series of experiments that examine the influence that the analysis tools, analysis settings and speakers have on formant measurements. The influence of these three factors was assessed by examining formant measurement errors and their behaviour. This was done using both synthetic and real speech. The synthetic speech was generated with known formant values so that the measurement errors could be calculated precisely. To investigate the influence of different speakers on measurement performance, synthetic speakers were created with different third formant structures and with different glottal source signals. These speakers’ synthetic vowels were analysed using Praat’s normal formant measuring tool across a range of LPC orders. The real speech was from a subset of 186 speakers from the TIMIT corpus. The measurements from these speakers were compared with a set of hand-corrected reference formant values to establish the performance of four measurement tools across a range of analysis parameters and measurement strategies. The analysis of the measurement errors explored the relationships between the analysis tools, the analysis parameters and the speakers, and also examined how the errors varied over the vowel space. LPC order was found to have the greatest influence on the magnitude of the errors and their overall behaviour was closely associated with the underlying measurement process used by the tools. The performance of the formant trackers tended to be better than the simple Praat measuring tool, and allowing the LPC order to vary across tokens improved the performance for all tools. The performance was found to differ across speakers, and for each real speaker, the best performance was obtained when the measurements were made with a range of LPC orders, rather than being restricted to just one. The most significant guidance that arises from the results is that analysts should have an understanding of the basis of LPC analysis and know how it is applied to obtain formant measurements in the software that they use. They should also understand the influence of LPC order and the other analysis parameters concerning formant tracking. This will enable them to select the most appropriate settings and avoid making unreliable measurements

The Pitch Range of Italians and Americans. A Comparative Study

Linguistic experiments have investigated the nature of F0 span and level in cross-linguistic comparisons. However, only few studies have focused on the elaboration of a general-agreed methodology that may provide a unifying approach to the analysis of pitch range (Ladd, 1996; Patterson and Ladd, 1999; Daly and Warren, 2001; Bishop and Keating, 2010; Mennen et al. 2012). Pitch variation is used in different languages to convey different linguistic and paralinguistic meanings that may range from the expression of sentence modality to the marking of emotional and attitudinal nuances (Grice and Baumann, 2007). A number of factors have to be taken into consideration when determining the existence of measurable and reliable differences in pitch values. Daly and Warren (2001) demonstrated the importance of some independent variables such as language, age, body size, speaker sex (female vs. male), socio-cultural background, regional accents, speech task (read sentences vs. spontaneous dialogues), sentence type (questions vs. statements) and measure scales (Hertz, semitones, ERB etc.). Coherently with the model proposed by Mennen et al. (2012), my analysis of pitch range is based on the investigation of LTD (long-term distributional) and linguistic measures. LTD measures deal with the F0 distribution within a speaker’s contour (e.g. F0 minimum, F0 maximum, F0 mean, F0 median, standard deviation, F0 span) while linguistic measures are linked to specific targets within the contour, such as peaks and valleys (e.g. high and low landmarks) and preserve the temporal sequences of pitch contours. This investigation analyzed the characteristics of pitch range production and perception in English sentences uttered by Americans and Italians. Four experiments were conducted to examine different phenomena: i) the contrast between measures of F0 level and span in utterances produced by Americans and Italians (experiments 1-2); ii) the contrast between the pitch range produced by males and females in L1 and L2 (experiment 1); iii) the F0 patterns in different sentence types, that is, yes-no questions, wh-questions, and exclamations (experiment 2); iv) listeners’ evaluations of pitch span in terms of ±interesting, ±excited, ±credible, ±friendly ratings of different sentence types (experiments 3-4); v) the correlation between pitch span of the sentences and the evaluations given by American and Italian listeners (experiment 3); vi) the listeners’ evaluations of pitch span values in manipulated stimuli, whose F0 span was re-synthesized under three conditions: narrow span, original span, and wide span (experiment 4); vii) the different evaluations given to the sentences by male and female listeners. The results of this investigation supported the following generalizations. First, pitch span more than level was found to be a cue for non-nativeness, because L2 speakers of English used a narrower span, compared to the native norm. What is more, the experimental data in the production studies indicated that the mode of sentences was better captured by F0 span than level. Second, the Italian learners of English were influenced by their L1 and transferred L1 pitch range variation into their L2. The English sentences produced by the Italians had overall higher pitch levels and narrower pitch span than those produced by the Americans. In addition, the Italians used overall higher pitch levels when speaking Italian and lower levels when speaking English. Conversely, their pitch span was generally higher in English and lower in Italian. When comparing productions in English, the Italian females used higher F0 levels than the American females; vice versa, the Italian males showed slightly lower F0 levels than the American males. Third, there was a systematic relation between pitch span values and the listeners’ evaluations of the sentences. The two groups of listeners (the Americans and the Italians) rated the stimuli with larger pitch span as more interesting, exciting and credible than the stimuli with narrower pitch span. Thus, the listeners relied on the perceived pitch span to differentiate among the stimuli. Fourth, both the American and the Italian speakers were considered more friendly when the pitch span of their sentences was widened (wide span manipulation) and less friendly when the pitch span was narrowed (narrow span manipulation). This happened in all the stimuli regardless of the native language of the speakers (American vs. Italian)

L’antériorisation de /ɔ/ en français contemporain : une étude acoustique comparative entre Québec et France

La présente étude porte sur l’antériorisation de /ɔ/, souvent étudiée en France, mais relativement peu au Québec. Pour mieux explorer la variation diatopique liée à ce phénomène et clarifier sa relation avec le contexte consonantique, une analyse acoustique comparative des trois premiers formants de 3835 voyelles produites en position accentuée dans des mots et pseudo-mots monosyllabiques (C)VC par 78 étudiants universitaires de Saguenay et de Québec (Québec) et de Lyon (France) a été menée. Des modèles de régression linéaire à effets mixtes appliqués aux données permettent de constater une différence importante du F2 de /ɔ/ entre les villes, cette voyelle étant plus antérieure à Québec qu’à Saguenay et à Lyon qu’à Saguenay. Les voyelles québécoises et françaises se distinguent également, dans une moindre mesure, sur le plan de F1 et de F3. Dans tous les cas, quelle que soit leur position (antéposée ou postposée), les consonnes antérieures (ex. /t, d/) favorisent le F2 le plus élevé et les consonnes labiales (ex. /p, b/), le F2 le plus bas. Ces résultats indiquent que l’antériorisation de /ɔ/ à l’échelle acoustique est bien présente chez les jeunes locuteurs québécois et qu’elle est variable tant au niveau micro-géographique que macro-géographique, tout en étant largement affectée par la coarticulation chez tous les locuteurs. This study is concerned with /ɔ/-fronting, a phenomenon widely studied in France, but that has received little attention in Quebec French. To better understand the regional variation of /ɔ/-fronting and to further investigate its relationship with the consonantal environment, a contrastive acoustic analysis of the first three formants of 3835 stressed vowels uttered in (C)VC monosyllabic word and pseudo-words by university students from Saguenay and Québec (Quebec) and Lyon (France) was conducted. Linear mixed effects regressions fitted to the data show substantial variation in F2 across cities, /ɔ/ being more fronted in Québec than in Saguenay and in Lyon than in Saguenay. F1 and F3 also vary between France and Quebec French. In all cases, no matter their position (before or after the vowel), front consonants (ex. /t, d/) favor the highest F2, while labial consonants (ex. /p, b/) are associated with the lowest F2. These results suggest that /ɔ/-fronting, at the acoustical level, is alive and well among young Quebec French speakers and that it is variable both at the micro- and macrogeographical levels, while also being largely affected by coarticulation across all speakers

L'antériorisation de /ɔ/ en français contemporain : une étude acoustique comparative entre Québec et France

Protocole d'entente entre l'Université Laval et l'Université du Québec à ChicoutimiLa présente étude porte sur l’antériorisation de /ɔ/, souvent étudiée en France, mais relativement peu au Québec. Pour mieux explorer la variation diatopique liée à ce phénomène et clarifier sa relation avec le contexte consonantique, une analyse acoustique comparative des trois premiers formants de 3835 voyelles produites en position accentuée dans des mots et pseudo-mots monosyllabiques (C)VC par 78 étudiants universitaires de Saguenay et de Québec (Québec) et de Lyon (France) a été menée. Des modèles de régression linéaire à effets mixtes appliqués aux données permettent de constater une différence importante du F₂ de /ɔ/ entre les villes, cette voyelle étant plus antérieure à Québec qu’à Saguenay et à Lyon qu’à Saguenay. Les voyelles québécoises et françaises se distinguent également, dans une moindre mesure, sur le plan de F₁ et de F₃. Dans tous les cas, quelle que soit leur position (antéposée ou postposée), les consonnes antérieures (ex. /t, d/) favorisent le F₂ le plus élevé et les consonnes labiales (ex. /p, b/), le F₂ le plus bas. Ces résultats indiquent que l’antériorisation de /ɔ/ à l’échelle acoustique est bien présente chez les jeunes locuteurs québécois et qu’elle est variable tant au niveau micro-géographique que macro-géographique, tout en étant largement affectée par la coarticulation chez tous les locuteurs.This study is concerned with /ɔ/-fronting, a phenomenon widely studied in France, but that has received little attention in Quebec French. To better understand the regional variation of /ɔ/-fronting and to further investigate its relationship with the consonantal environment, a contrastive acoustic analysis of the first three formants of 3835 stressed vowels uttered in (C)VC monosyllabic word and pseudo-words by university students from Saguenay and Québec (Quebec) and Lyon (France) was conducted. Linear mixed effects regressions fitted to the data show substantial variation in F₂ across cities, /ɔ/ being more fronted in Québec than in Saguenay and in Lyon than in Saguenay. F₁ and F₃ also vary between France and Quebec French. In all cases, no matter their position (before or after the vowel), front consonants (ex. /t, d/) favor the highest F₂, while labial consonants (ex. /p, b/) are associated with the lowest F₂. These results suggest that /ɔ/-fronting, at the acoustical level, is alive and well among young Quebec French speakers and that it is variable both at the micro- and macro-geographical levels, while also being largely affected by coarticulation across all speakers

Proceedings of the VIIth GSCP International Conference

The 7th International Conference of the Gruppo di Studi sulla Comunicazione Parlata, dedicated to the memory of Claire Blanche-Benveniste, chose as its main theme Speech and Corpora. The wide international origin of the 235 authors from 21 countries and 95 institutions led to papers on many different languages. The 89 papers of this volume reflect the themes of the conference: spoken corpora compilation and annotation, with the technological connected fields; the relation between prosody and pragmatics; speech pathologies; and different papers on phonetics, speech and linguistic analysis, pragmatics and sociolinguistics. Many papers are also dedicated to speech and second language studies. The online publication with FUP allows direct access to sound and video linked to papers (when downloaded)

The effects of English proficiency on the processing of Bulgarian-accented English by Bulgarian-English bilinguals

This dissertation explores the potential benefit of listening to and with one’s first-language accent, as suggested by the Interspeech Intelligibility Benefit Hypothesis (ISIB). Previous studies have not consistently supported this hypothesis. According to major second language learning theories, the listener’s second language proficiency determines the extent to which the listener relies on their first language phonetics. Hence, this thesis provides a novel approach by focusing on the role of English proficiency in the understanding of Bulgarian-accented English for Bulgarian-English bilinguals. The first experiment investigated whether evoking the listeners’ L1 Bulgarian phonetics would improve the speed of processing Bulgarian-accented English words, compared to Standard British English words, and vice versa. Listeners with lower English proficiency processed Bulgarian-accented English faster than SBE, while high proficiency listeners tended to have an advantage with SBE over Bulgarian accent. The second experiment measured the accuracy and reaction times (RT) in a lexical decision task with single-word stimuli produced by two L1 English speakers and two Bulgarian-English bilinguals. Listeners with high proficiency in English responded slower and less accurately to Bulgarian-accented speech compared to L1 English speech and compared to lower proficiency listeners. These accent preferences were also supported by the listener’s RT adaptation across the first experimental block. A follow-up investigation compared the results of L1 UK English listeners to the bilingual listeners with the highest proficiency in English. The L1 English listeners and the bilinguals processed both accents with similar speed, accuracy and adaptation patterns, showing no advantage or disadvantage for the bilinguals. These studies support existing models of second language phonetics. Higher proficiency in L2 is associated with lesser reliance on L1 phonetics during speech processing. In addition, the listeners with the highest English proficiency had no advantage when understanding Bulgarian-accented English compared to L1 English listeners, contrary to ISIB. Keywords: Bulgarian-English bilinguals, bilingual speech processing, L2 phonetic development, lexical decision, proficienc

The future of dialects: Selected papers from Methods in Dialectology XV

Traditional dialects have been encroached upon by the increasing mobility of their speakers and by the onslaught of national languages in education and mass media. Typically, older dialects are “leveling” to become more like national languages. This is regrettable when the last articulate traces of a culture are lost, but it also promotes a complex dynamics of interaction as speakers shift from dialect to standard and to intermediate compromises between the two in their forms of speech. Varieties of speech thus live on in modern communities, where they still function to mark provenance, but increasingly cultural and social provenance as opposed to pure geography. They arise at times from the need to function throughout the different groups in society, but they also may have roots in immigrants’ speech, and just as certainly from the ineluctable dynamics of groups wishing to express their identity to themselves and to the world. The future of dialects is a selection of the papers presented at Methods in Dialectology XV, held in Groningen, the Netherlands, 11-15 August 2014. While the focus is on methodology, the volume also includes specialized studies on varieties of Catalan, Breton, Croatian, (Belgian) Dutch, English (in the US, the UK and in Japan), German (including Swiss German), Italian (including Tyrolean Italian), Japanese, and Spanish as well as on heritage languages in Canada