On the acoustics of overlapping laughter in conversational speech

The social nature of laughter invites people to laugh together. This joint vocal action often results in overlapping laughter. In this paper, we show that the acoustics of overlapping laughs are different from non-overlapping laughs. We found that overlapping laughs are stronger prosodically marked than non-overlapping ones, in terms of higher values for duration, mean F0, mean and maximum intensity, and the amount of voicing. This effect is intensified by the number of people joining in the laughter event, which suggests that entrainment is at work. We also found that group size affects the number of overlapping laughs which illustrates the contagious nature of laughter. Finally, people appear to join laughter simultaneously at a delay of approximately 500 ms; a delay that must be considered when developing spoken dialogue systems that are able to respond to users’ laughs

Acoustic, Morphological, and Functional Aspects of `yeah/ja' in Dutch, English and German

We explore different forms and functions of one of the most common feedback expressions in Dutch, English, and German, namely `yeah/ja' which is known for its multi-functionality and ambiguous usage in dialog. For example, it can be used as a yes-answer, or as a pure continuer, or as a way to show agreement. In addition, `yeah/ja' can be used in its single form, but it can also be combined with other particles, forming multi-word expressions, especially in Dutch and German. We have found substantial differences on the morpho-lexical level between the three related languages which enhances the ambiguous character of `yeah/ja'. An explorative analysis of the prosodic features of `yeah/ja' has shown that mainly a higher intensity is used to signal speaker incipiency across the inspected languages

Comparing non-verbal vocalisations in conversational speech corpora

Conversations do not only consist of spoken words but they also consist of non-verbal vocalisations. Since there is no standard to define and to classify (possible) non-speech sounds the annotations for these vocalisations differ very much for various corpora of conversational speech. There seems to be agreement in the six inspected corpora that hesitation sounds and feedback vocalisations are considered as words (without a standard orthography). The most frequent non-verbal vocalisation are laughter on the one hand and, if considered a vocal sound, breathing noises on the other

Towards a phonetic conspectus of preaspiration

Preaspiration, i.e. [hC], is a rare feature of stop production in the world’s languages that has been recently found to occur in Sienese Italian. We present a qualitative acoustic-phonetic description of voiceless geminate stops /p: t: k:/ with preaspiration that occurred in a corpus of spontaneous Sienese Italian speech (6 speakers). We outline the different fine-grained realizations of preaspiration and discuss the findings in the context of our general knowledge of the phenomenon across languages

On the comprehension of extremely fast synthetic speech

We report on a pilot study testing the subjective comprehension of tempo-scaled synthetic speech with 9 sighted and 2 blind students. German texts (length, 100 words) were generated with a formant synthesizer and a diphone synthesizer at seven different tempo steps from 3.5 syllables per second (s/s) to 17.5 s/s. The results show that the blind subjects can understand formant synthesis at all offered rates, whereas the performance of their sighted peers declines at a rate of 10.5 s/s. Contrary to our expectations, diphone synthesis is less easy to understand than formant synthesis for both groups at rates faster than 7.5 s/s. The potential reasons for these two main findings are discussed

Vowel duration, compression and lengthening in stressed syllables in Italian

The focus of this study is on temporal organization, specifically of vowel duration, in stressed syllables in (standard) Italian. We investigate possible compression effects on the duration of stressed vowels according to wordposition (final, penult and antepenult) and syllable type (open vs. closed) in this language. Our results show shortening in some contexts, e.g. closed syllables, and antepenultimate position, but not in all tested contexts. Compression effects do not surface in a fully linear fashion, with complications arising in word-final position where competing tendencies towards lengthening and shortening are found to co-occur. We consider the implications of our results for phonological descriptions of Italian

What makes 'mama' and 'papa' acceptable? Experiments with a replica of von Kempelen's speaking machine

The paper reports on experiments with acoustic recordings of a self-built replica of the historic speaking machine of Wolfgang von Kempelen. Several possibilities of the reed as the glottal excitation mechanism were tested. Perception tests with naïve listeners revealed that the machinegenerated words 'mama' and 'papa' were partially recognised as an authentic child voice – as it was also the case in von Kempelen's demonstrations in the late 18th century

Wolfgang von Kempelen’s speaking machine as an instrument for demonstration and research

Scientific interest in von Kempelen's 'speaking machine' stems mainly from a general interest in the history of science. This study, however, is devoted to the question of what relevance the 'speaking machine' has today. Apart for discussing why it fascinates researchers and non-researchers alike we describe the potential of replicas as an instrument for demonstration and for researching speech generation

Stationen mechanischer Sprachsynthese vom 18. bis zum 20. Jahrhundert

Der Aufsatz widmet sich einigen markanten historischen Einzelleistungen auf dem Gebiet der mechanischen Sprachsynthese, die auch heute noch faszinierend, jedoch zumeist nur in groben Zügen bekannt sind. An der hier präsentierten Auswahl erweist sich sowohl die fesselnde Kraft eines einmal als grundsätzlich praktikabel erkannten Konzeptes der stimmlichen Anregung als auch die hieraus resultierende Originalität immer neuer Ansätze, diesem Syntheseprinzip zum technologischen Durchbruch zu verhelfen

Comparing Annotations of Non-verbal Vocalisations in Speech Corpora

In this study eleven corpora of spontaneous and scripted speech (in English and in German) are analysed regarding their annotation inventories of selected highly frequent nonverbal vocalisations (NVVs). It appears that only one corpus considers all NVVs and that laughter is the only NVV annotated in all corpora. The findings lead to a discussion of possible reasons for this situation. In conclusion it is argued that a wider distribution and more consistency is needed with respect to the annotation of NVVs