A Comprehensive Review of F0 and its Various Correlations

This paper examines many acoustic characteristics of F0 and their relevance in linguistic analysis. It also highlights correlations between F0 measurements and vowel height, gender, accentedness, and phonation types. The latter is the center piece of the paper. This correlation is needed for a more reliable account of pitch contrasts in accent and tone languages. Two approaches are used in establishing this correlation. The first relies on a subharmonic equation and the second makes use of Critical band calculations. Both yield the same results. The data used to highlight these various correlations come from Peterson and Barney (1952), Hillenbrand et al. (1995), and a fresh set of F0 measurements obtained from 46 speakers of Central Minnesota (17 males and 29 females)

Modeling biomechanical influence of epilaryngeal stricture on the vocal folds: A low-dimensional model of vocal-ventricular coupling

Purpose: Physiological and phonetic studies suggest that, at moderate levels of epilaryngeal stricture, the ventricular folds impinge upon the vocal folds and influence their dynamical behavior, which is thought to be responsible for constricted laryngeal sounds. In this work, the authors examine this hypothesis through biomechanical modeling. Method: The dynamical response of a low-dimensional, lumped-element model of the vocal folds under the influence of vocal-ventricular fold coupling was evaluated. The model was assessed for F0 and cover-mass phase difference. Case studies of simulations of different constricted phonation types and of glottal stop illustrate various additional aspects of model performance. Results: Simulated vocal-ventricular fold coupling lowers F0 and perturbs the mucosal wave. It also appears to reinforce irregular patterns of oscillation, and it can enhance laryngeal closure in glottal stop production. Conclusion: The effects of simulated vocal-ventricular fold coupling are consistent with sounds, such as creaky voice, harsh voice, and glottal stop, that have been observed to involve epilaryngeal stricture and apparent contact between the vocal folds and ventricular folds. This supports the view that vocal-ventricular fold coupling is important in the vibratory dynamics of such sounds and, furthermore, suggests that these sounds may intrinsically require epilaryngeal strictur

Výskyt iniciálních glotalizací ve slovenské angličtině

Výskyt iniciálních glotalizací ve slovenské angličtině Mária Uhrinová Praha, 2012 Abstrakt Doterajší výskum ukázal, že vlastnosti prozodickej štruktúry vplývajú na výskyt glotalizácie na začiatku slov v angličtine. Cieľom tejto práce je analýza výskytu glotalizácie v samohláskach na začiatku slov v angličtine Slovákov. Tento jav je skúmaný vo vzťahu k prozodickej štruktúre reči, predovšetkým k slovnému prízvuku a intonačným frázam. Sémantický status slov (lexikálne vs. gramatické slová) bol tiež vzatý do úvahy. Práca najprv ponúka zhrnutie z oblasti akvizície cudzieho jazyka so zameraním na osvojovanie si zvukovej stránky cudzieho jazyka. Poskytnutý je aj prehľad doterajších poznatkov o charaktere a výskyte glotalizácie. Emprická časť práce ja založená na nahrávkach pätnástich Slovákov hovoriacich po anglicky. Výsledky štúdie naznačujú, že slovenskí hovoriaci využívajú glotalizáciu pomerne často. Tento fakt by mal byť vzatý do úvahy pri hľadaní lepších metód učenia anglickej výslovnosti. Kľúčové slová: glotalizácia, prozodická štruktúra, slovenčina, angličtina, cudzí prízvukThe occurrence of word-initial glottalization in Slovak English Mária Uhrinová Praha, 2012 Abstract The features of prosodic structure were shown to influence the occurrence of word-initial glottalization in English. The aim of the present thesis is to analyze the occurrence of glottalization in word-initial vowels in Slovak English in relation to prosodic structure, specifically to word stress and position in the intonational phrase. The semantic status of words (lexical vs. grammatical) is also considered. The first part provides a brief overview of key concepts in second language acquisition with focus on acquisition of second language phonology. In addition, a summary of previous research on glottalization is given. The empirical part of this thesis is based on the recordings of 15 Slovak speakers of English. The results suggest that Slovak speakers use glottalization extensively in their production of English. This should be taken into consideration when looking for better methods for teaching English pronunciation. Keywords: glottalization, prosodic structure, Slovak, English, foreign accentDepartment of the English Language and ELT MethodologyÚstav anglického jazyka a didaktikyFaculty of ArtsFilozofická fakult

Analysis of nonmodal glottal event patterns with application to automatic speaker recognition

Thesis (Ph. D.)--Harvard-MIT Division of Health Sciences and Technology, 2008.Includes bibliographical references (p. 211-215).Regions of phonation exhibiting nonmodal characteristics are likely to contain information about speaker identity, language, dialect, and vocal-fold health. As a basis for testing such dependencies, we develop a representation of patterns in the relative timing and height of nonmodal glottal pulses. To extract the timing and height of candidate pulses, we investigate a variety of inverse-filtering schemes including maximum-entropy deconvolution that minimizes predictability of a signal and minimum-entropy deconvolution that maximizes pulse-likeness. Hybrid formulations of these methods are also considered. we then derive a theoretical framework for understanding frequency- and time-domain properties of a pulse sequence, a process that sheds light on the transformation of nonmodal pulse trains into useful parameters. In the frequency domain, we introduce the first comprehensive mathematical derivation of the effect of deterministic and stochastic source perturbation on the short-time spectrum. We also propose a pitch representation of nonmodality that provides an alternative viewpoint on the frequency content that does not rely on Fourier bases. In developing time-domain properties, we use projected low-dimensional histograms of feature vectors derived from pulse timing and height parameters. For these features, we have found clusters of distinct pulse patterns, reflecting a wide variety of glottal-pulse phenomena including near-modal phonation, shimmer and jitter, diplophonia and triplophonia, and aperiodicity. Using temporal relationships between successive feature vectors, an algorithm by which to separate these different classes of glottal-pulse characteristics has also been developed.(cont.) We have used our glottal-pulse-pattern representation to automatically test for one signal dependency: speaker dependence of glottal-pulse sequences. This choice is motivated by differences observed between talkers in our separated feature space. Using an automatic speaker verification experiment, we investigate tradeoffs in speaker dependency for short-time pulse patterns, reflecting local irregularity, as well as long-time patterns related to higher-level cyclic variations. Results, using speakers with a broad array of modal and nonmodal behaviors, indicate a high accuracy in speaker recognition performance, complementary to the use of conventional mel-cepstral features. These results suggest that there is rich structure to the source excitation that provides information about a particular speaker's identity.by Nicolas Malyska.Ph.D

Relationship between the strength of foreign accent and the presence of glottalization

Tato práce se zabývá tím, jaký podíl má glotalizace na cizineckém přízvuku. Důraz klade na české mluvčí angličtiny a hodnocení jejich promluv. Mluvčí, jejichž promluvy byly pro účely této práce analyzovány, byli předem ohodnoceni percepčním testem. Podle výsledků tohoto testu byli rozděleni do tří skupin: A, která obsáhla mluvčí hovořící angličtinou blížící se rodilému standardu; C, do které byli naopak zařazeni mluvčí se silným českým přízvukem; a B, do které spadají mluvčí s detekovatelným cizineckým přízvukem, jenž však není hodnocen jako český. Úkolem této práce je zjistit, jakým způsobem používají mluvčí každé skupiny glotalizaci a zda se toto použití shoduje s předpoklady vycházejícími z dosavadního výzkumu.In this paper, we are interested in what the part of glottalization is in a foreign accent. We focus on Czech speakers of English and an evaluation of their utterances. Those speakers analyzed for the purposes of this paper were evaluated in advance by a perceptual test. In accordance with the results of the test, they were divided into three groups: A, containing those speakers with an English close to the native standard; C, containing speakers with a strong Czech accent; and B, containing speakers with a detectable foreign accent which, however, is not evaluated as a Czech one. The aim of this paper is to determine in what way speakers of each group use glottalization and whether the use is identical to the assumptions of the previous studies.Institute of PhoneticsFonetický ústavFaculty of ArtsFilozofická fakult

Perception of Glottalization in Varying Pitch Contexts in Mandarin Chinese

Although glottalization has often been associated with low pitch, evidence from a number of sources supports the assertion that this association is not obligatory, and is likely to be language-specific. Following a previous study testing perception of glottalization by German, English, and Swedish listeners, the current research investigates the influence of pitch context on the perception of glottalization by native speakers of a tone language, Mandarin Chinese. Listeners heard AXB sets in which they were asked to match glottalized stimuli with pitch contours. We find that Mandarin listeners tend not to be influenced by the pitch context when judging the pitch of glottalized stretches of speech. These data lend support to the idea that the perception of glottalization varies in relation to language-specific prosodic structure.casl[1] Gordon, M. & P. Ladefoged (2001). Phonation types: a crosslinguistic overview. Journalof Phonetics 29: 383-406. [2] Gerratt, B.R. & J. Kreiman (2001). Toward a taxonomy of nonmodal phonation. Journal of Phonetics 29: 365-381. [3] Catford, J.C. (1964). Phonation types: the classification of some laryngeal components of speech production. In: Abercrombie, D. et al. (eds.) In honour of Daniel Jones, London: Longmans, pp. 26-37. [4] Blomgren, M., Y. Chen, M.L. Ng, & H.R. Gilbert (1998). Acoustic, aerodynamic, physiologic, and perceptual properties of modal and vocal fry registers. Journal of the Acoustical Society of America 103(5): 2649-2658. [5] Gussenhoven, C. (2004). The phonology of tone and intonation. Cambridge: Cambridge University Press. [6] Pierrehumbert, J. & D. Talkin (1992). Lenition of /h/ and glottal stop. In Papers in Laboratory Phonology II. Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 90-117. [7] Pierrehumbert, J. (1995). Prosodic effects on glottal allophones. In: Fujimura, O., Hirano, M. (eds.), Vocal fold physiology: voice quality control. Singular Publishing Group, San Diego, pp. 39- 60. [8] Dilley, L., S. Shattuck-Hufnagel, & M. Ostendorf (1996). Glottalization of word-initial vowels as a function of prosodic structure. Journal of Phonetics 24: 423-444. [9] Redi, L. & S. Shattuck-Hufnagel (2001). Variation in the realization of glottalization in normal speakers. Journal of Phonetics 29: 407-429. [10] Henton, C. & A. Bladon (1988). Creak as a socio-phonetic marker. In Hyman, L.M. & C.N. Li (eds.) Language, Speech and Mind: studies in honor of Victoria A. Fromkin. London, pp. 3- 29. [11] Huffman, M.K. (2005). Segmental and prosodic effects on coda glottalization. Journal of Phonetics 33: 335-362. [12] Ogden, R. (2001). Turn transition, creak and glottal stop in Finnish talk-in-interaction. Journal of the International Phonetic Association 31: 139-152. [13] Ogden, R. (2004). Non-modal voice quality and turn-taking in Finnish. In Couper-Kuhlen, E & Ford, C. (eds.) Sound patterns in interaction: cross-linguistic studies from conversation. Amsterdam: John Benjamins, pp. 29-62. [14] Bissiri, M. P., M.L. Lecumberri, M. Cooke & J. Vol_n, (2011). The role of word-initial glottal stops in recognizing English words. Proceedings of Interspeech 2011, Florence, Italy, pp. 165-168. [15] Kohler, K. J. (1994). Glottal stops and glottalization in German. Phonetica 51: 38-51. [16] Ding, H., O. Jokisch & R. Hoffmann (2004). Glottalization in inventory construction: a cross-language study. Proceedings of ISCSLP 2004, Hong Kong, pp. 37-40. [17] Chao, Y.R. (1968). A Grammar of Spoken Chinese. Berkeley, University of California Press. [18] Ding, H. & J. Helbig (1996). Sprecher- und kontextbedingte Varianz des dritten Vokaltones in chinesischen Silben - eine akustische Untersuchung. Proceedings of DAGA 1996, Bonn, Germany, pp. 514-515. [19] Silverman, D. (1997). Laryngeal Complexity in Otomanguean Vowels. Phonology 14: 235-261. [20] Frazier, M. (2008). The interaction of pitch and creaky voice: data from Yucatec Maya and cross-linguistic implications. UBC Working Papers in Linguistics: Proceedings of Workshop on Structure and Constituency in the Languages of the Americas (WSCLA), pp. 112-125. [21] N_ Chasaide, A. & C. Gobl (2004). Voice quality and f0 in prosody: towards a holistic account. Proceedings of the 2nd International Conference on Speech Prosody, Nara, Japan, pp. 189-196. [22] Bissiri, M.P. & M. Zellers (2013). Perception of glottalization in varying pitch contexts across languages. Proceedings of Interspeech 2013, Lyon, France, pp. 253-257. [23] Boersma, P. & D. Weenink (2013). Praat: doing phonetics by computer [Computer program]. Available http://www.praat.org/. [24] Liu, S. & A.G. Samuel (2004). Perception of Mandarin lexical tones when F0 information is neutralized. Language and Speech 47(2): 109-138. [25] Lee, C.-Y., L. Tao & Z.S. Bond (2008). Identification of acoustically modified Mandarin tones by native listeners. Journal of Phonetics 36: 537-563.pub4421pu

An Exploratory Study on Perceptual Spaces of the Singing Voice

Sixty participants provided dissimilarity ratings between various singing techniques. Multidimensional scaling, class averaging and clustering techniques were used to analyse timbral spaces and how they change between different singers, genders and registers. Clustering analysis showed that ground-truth similarity and silhouette scores that were not significantly different between gender or register conditions, while similarity scores were positively correlated with participants’ instrumental abilities and task comprehension. Participant feedback showed how a revised study design might mitigate noise in our data, leading to more detailed statistical results. Timbre maps and class distance analysis showed us which singing techniques remained similar to one another across gender and register conditions. This research provides insight into how the timbre space of singing changes under different conditions, highlights the subjectivity of perception between participants, and provides generalised timbre maps for regularisation in machine learnin

The voice quality distinction in Dinka songs

The purpose of this work is to study the distinction of the voice quality in Dinka songs, in particular to determine whether and how the phonemic distinction between modal and breathy vowel is conveyed in singing. The methodology adopted consists in the application of two acoustic measurements that have already yielded interesting results on Dinka speech data, namely formant tracking and spectral regression. The outcome of these measurements clearly points towards a neutralisation of the distinction of voice quality in songs. The results of a perception experiment performed on human listeners show more evidence to support the conclusion that no difference in voice quality is conveyed in songs. In the absence of any acoustic cue that could be used by the listeners to detect voice quality, further research is suggested. In particular, the presentation of the same perception experiment to Dinka native speakers could give crucial evidence on the nature of the acoustic cues that may or may not still be present in songs