Acoustic articulatory evidence for quantal vowel categories : the features [low] and [back]

Thesis (Ph. D.)--Harvard-MIT Division of Health Sciences and Technology, 2009.Cataloged from student-submitted PDF version of thesis.Includes bibliographical references (p. 139-142).In recent years, research in human speech communication suggested that the inventory of sound units that are observed in vowels across languages is strongly influenced by the acoustic properties of the human subglottal system. That is, there is a discrete set of possible vowel features that are constrained by the interaction of the acoustic/articulatory properties of the vowels and a small set of attributes that are observed in the subglottal region. This thesis tests the hypothesis that subglottal resonances govern vowel feature boundaries for three populations: adult speakers of English; adult speakers of Korean; and children learning English. First, we explored the relations among F1 of vowels, the first subglottal resonances (SubF1) and the feature [low] in English. For the diphthong [??], F1 peaks for vowels showed an acoustic irregularity near the speaker' s SubF1. For monophthongs, analysis of F1 frequency distributions shows a boundary between [+low] and [-low] vowels at the speakers' SubF1. Second, we studied the relations among F2 of Korean vowels, SubF2 and the feature [back], to test whether the relation between subglottal resonances and the feature boundary, demonstrated earlier for English, also can be applied to other languages. Results show that the F2 boundary between [back] and [front] vowels was placed near SubF2 in Korean, as in English. Third, we explored the development of vowel formants in relation to subglottal resonances for 10 children in the age range of 2;6-3;9 years using the database of Imbrie (2005). Results show that at the earlier ages, formant values deviated from the expected relations, but during the six month period in which the measurements were made, there was considerable movement toward the expected values.(cont.)The transition to the expected relations appeared to occur by the age of 3 years for most of these children, in a developmental pattern that was inconsistent with an account in terms of simple anatomical increase. These three sets of observations provide evidence that subglottal resonances play a role in defining vowel feature boundaries, as predicted by Stevens' (1972) hypothesis that contrastive phonological features in human languages have arisen from quantal discontinuities in articulatory-acoustic space.by Youngsook Jung.Ph.D

On the Hungarian sung vowels

Singing at a very high pitch is associated with vocal tract adjustments in professional western operatic singing. However, as of yet there is an inadequate amount of data available on the extent of the acoustic transformation the Hungarian vowels undergo during singing. The author’s purpose is to evaluate the acoustic and articulatory changes of Hungarian vowel qualities, and examine the effect of these changes on the intelligibility of sounds, which has not yet been done for Hungarian. The paper contains a brief summary of formerly described tendencies for other languages and data for Hungarian from pilot studies carried out by the author with an adult soprano’s and a child’s sung vowels

The role of lower airway resonances in defining vowel feature contrasts.

Thesis (Ph. D.)—Harvard University--MIT Division of Health Sciences and Technology, 2006.Includes bibliographical references (p. 139-145).This electronic version was prepared by the author. The certified thesis is available in the Institute Archives and Special Collections.Ph. D

Acoustic evidence for the development of speech

Includes bibliographical references (p. 124-132).Research partially supported by the National Institute of Neurological and Communicative Disorders and Stroke. Research partially supported by a Whitaker Health Sciences Fellowship and a C.J. LeBel fellowship.Corine Anna Bickley

Physiological and acoustic characteristics of the female music theater voice

International audienc

Mássalhangzó-magánhangzó kapcsolatok automatikus osztályozása szubglottális rezonanciák alapján

A nemzetközi szakirodalom az elmúlt években kezdett intenzíven foglalkozni a szubglottális rezonanciák vizsgálatával, melyek az alsó légutak rezonanciái. Korábbi kutatásokban kimutatták, hogy ezek a magánhangzókat természetes osztályokra tagolják. A mássalhangzómagánhangzó kapcsolatokban a magánhangzó formánsértékei nem állandóak a koartikuláció miatt. A zárhangok például képzési helyüktől függően módosítják a szomszédos magánhangzó formánsait. A mássalhangzó végén és a magánhangzó közepén mérhető második formáns értékét összevetve rajzolható meg a locus egyenlet tér, melyben az egyes beszédhangosztályok az artikulációs helyük szerint elkülönülve jelennek meg. Hipotéziseink szerint a csoportok elkülönüléséhez a szubglottális rezonanciák is hozzájárulnak, hasonlóan a magánhangzókban okozott kategorikus elválasztáshoz. Jelen kutatás során egy magyar anyanyelvű beszélő alapján tovább vizsgáljuk a mássalhangzó-magánhangzó kapcsolatok helyét a locus egyenlet térben, valamint a szubglottális rezonanciák csoportelválasztó szerepét is elemezzük. Bemutatjuk egy automatikus osztályozó működését, amely a szubglottális rezonanciák és a második formáns viszonya alapján csoportosítja a mássalhangzó-magánhangzó beszédhangkapcsolatokat

Speech Communication

Contains table of contents for Part V, table of contents for Section 1, reports on six research projects and a list of publications.C.J. Lebel FellowshipDennis Klatt Memorial FundNational Institutes of Health Grant R01-DC00075National Institutes of Health Grant R01-DC01291National Institutes of Health Grant R01-DC01925National Institutes of Health Grant R01-DC02125National Institutes of Health Grant R01-DC02978National Institutes of Health Grant R01-DC03007National Institutes of Health Grant R29-DC02525National Institutes of Health Grant F32-DC00194National Institutes of Health Grant F32-DC00205National Institutes of Health Grant T32-DC00038National Science Foundation Grant IRI 89-05249National Science Foundation Grant IRI 93-14967National Science Foundation Grant INT 94-2114

Models and Analysis of Vocal Emissions for Biomedical Applications

The International Workshop on Models and Analysis of Vocal Emissions for Biomedical Applications (MAVEBA) came into being in 1999 from the particularly felt need of sharing know-how, objectives and results between areas that until then seemed quite distinct such as bioengineering, medicine and singing. MAVEBA deals with all aspects concerning the study of the human voice with applications ranging from the neonate to the adult and elderly. Over the years the initial issues have grown and spread also in other aspects of research such as occupational voice disorders, neurology, rehabilitation, image and video analysis. MAVEBA takes place every two years always in Firenze, Italy. This edition celebrates twenty years of uninterrupted and succesfully research in the field of voice analysis

Breathy, Resonant, Pressed - Automatic Detection Of Phonation Mode From Audio Recordings of Singing

In this paper we present an experiment on automatic detection of phonation modes from recordings of sustained sung vowels. We created an open dataset specifically for this experiment, containing recordings of nine vowels from multiple languages, sung by a female singer on all pitches in her vocal range in phonation modes breathy, neutral, flow (resonant) and pressed. The dataset is available under a Creative Commons license at . First, glottal flow waveform is estimated via inverse filtering (IAIF) from audio recordings. Then six parameters of the glottal flow waveform are calculated. A 4-class Support Vector Machine classifier is constructed to separate these features into phonation mode classes. We automated the IAIF approach by computing the values of the input arguments – lip radiation and formant count – leading to the best-performing SVM classifiers (average classification accuracy over 60%), yielding a physical model for the articulation of the vowels. We examine the steps needed to generalise and extend the experimental work presented in this paper in order to apply this method in ethnomusicological investigations

Formant and burst spectral measurements with quantitative error models for speech sound classification.

Thesis (Ph. D.)—Massachusetts Institute of Technology, Dept. of Electrical Engineering and Computer Science, 1996.Includes bibliographical references (p. 142-145).This electronic version was scanned from a copy of the thesis on file at the Speech Communication Group. The certified thesis is available in the Institute Archives and Special Collections.National Institute on Deafness and Other Communication Disorders. National Science Foundation.Ph. D