Baumeister, Barbara

Nauke, Astrid

Schiel, Florian

English

Universität München: Elektronischen Publikationen

Abstracts, IAFPA 2010, Department of Phonetics, Trier University, Germany 
 
On the Effect of Alcoholisation on Fundamental Frequency 
B. Baumeister, F. Schiel 
Institut für Phonetik und Sprachverarbeitung 
Ludwig-Maximilians-Universität, München, Germany 
{bba|schiel}@phonetik.uni-muenchen.de 
Introduction and goals  
The present study is based on the Alcohol Language Corpus (ALC)
1
 which contains the speech of 
162 speakers of both gender, recorded in intoxicated and sober condition. The aim was to analyse 
the effect of alcoholisation on speaker's F0 with regard to gender, speech style and vowel class. 
Method 
Some other studies already examined the effect of alcohol on F0 (e.g. Sobell et al. 1982; Hollien et 
al. 2001; Braun & Künzel 2003), but none of them dealt with a large number of speakers of both 
genders
2
. Although blood alcohol concentration (BAC) is measured by blood samples in ALC, for 
this study we merely use a binary distinction between sober and BAC>0.5‰. 
Two different analyses of F0 were conducted. The first is a long-term analysis of F0 of total 
utterances of 126 speakers (61 female, 65 male) whenever the F0 tracker (Schäfer 1983) indicated 
voiced speech. In the second analysis F0 of the vowels /a:/, /e:/, /i:/ and /u:/ of 110 speakers
3
 (52 
female, 58 male) were extracted and analysed. For both analyses, the median F0m and the quarter 
quantile distance F0qq were calculated for three different speech styles: read speech, spontaneous 
speech and command&control speech. 
Results 
In the long-term analysis, a significant increase of F0m can be found for both genders and for all 
speech styles. F0qq values also differ significantly for male and female, but the effect is stronger for 
female speakers. Concerning vowels, the intoxication has a significant rising effect on F0m for all 
tested vowels. F0qq is unaffected by the alcoholisation except for the vowel /a:/. 
Table 1. Effects of alcohol on F0m and F0qq. “↑” denotes a significant
4
 rise of F0 
 Long-term F0 /a:/ /e:/ /i:/ /u:/ 
 M F M F M F M F M F 
F0m ↑*** ↑*** ↑*** ↑*** ↑*** ↑** ↑*** ↑*** ↑*** ↑*** 
F0qq ↑* ↑*** ↑* ↑* - - - - - - 
References 
Braun A, Künzel H J (2003) The Effect of Alcohol on Speech Prosody. Proceedings of the ICPhS Barcelona, 2645. 
Hollien H, De Jong G, Martin C A, Schwartz R, Liljegren K (2001) Effects of Ethanol Intoxication on Speech 
Suprasegmentals. Journal of the Acoustical Society of America 110, 3198. 
Schiel F, Heinrich Chr, Barfüßer S, Gilg Th (2008) ALC Alcohol Language Corpus. Proc. of LREC 2008. 
Schäfer-Vincent K (1983) Pitch period detection and chaining: method and evaluation. Phonetica 1983, Vol 40, 177. 
Sobell L C, Sobell M B, Coleman R F (1982) Alcohol-Inducted Dysfluency in Nonalcoholics. Folia Phoniatrica 34, 
316-323. 
                                                 
1 See http://www.bas.uni-muenchen.de/Bas and Schiel et al. (2008) 
2
 The F statistic flattens at a degree of freedom of about 60; therefore at least 60 speakers of both sexes is desirable. 
3 Some of the speakers had to be excluded because they did not articulate all of the tested vowels in all speech styles. 
4 *** = p<0.001, ** = p<0.01, * = p<0.05 


On the Effect of Alcoholisation on Fundamental Frequency

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Abstracts, IAFPA 2010, Department of Phonetics, Trier University, Germany  On the Effect of Alcoholisation on Fundamental Frequency B. Baumeister, F. Schiel Institut für Phonetik und Sprachverarbeitung Ludwig-Maximilians-Universität, München, Germany {bba|schiel}@phonetik.uni-muenchen.de Introduction and goals  The present study is based on the Alcohol Language Corpus (ALC)1 which contains the speech of 162 speakers of both gender, recorded in intoxicated and sober condition. The aim was to analyse the effect of alcoholisation on speaker's F0 with regard to gender, speech style and vowel class. Method Some other studies already examined the effect of alcohol on F0 (e.g. Sobell et al. 1982; Hollien et al. 2001; Braun & Künzel 2003), but none of them dealt with a large number of speakers of both genders2. Although blood alcohol concentration (BAC) is measured by blood samples in ALC, for this study we merely use a binary distinction between sober and BAC>0.5‰. Two different analyses of F0 were conducted. The first is a long-term analysis of F0 of total utterances of 126 speakers (61 female, 65 male) whenever the F0 tracker (Schäfer 1983) indicated voiced speech. In the second analysis F0 of the vowels /a:/, /e:/, /i:/ and /u:/ of 110 speakers3 (52 female, 58 male) were extracted and analysed. For both analyses, the median F0m and the quarter quantile distance F0qq were calculated for three different speech styles: read speech, spontaneous speech and command&control speech. Results In the long-term analysis, a significant increase of F0m can be found for both genders and for all speech styles. F0qq values also differ significantly for male and female, but the effect is stronger for female speakers. Concerning vowels, the intoxication has a significant rising effect on F0m for all tested vowels. F0qq is unaffected by the alcoholisation except for the vowel /a:/. Table 1. Effects of alcohol on F0m and F0qq. “↑” denotes a significant4 rise of F0  Long-term F0 /a:/ /e:/ /i:/ /u:/  M F M F M F M F M F F0m ↑*** ↑*** ↑*** ↑*** ↑*** ↑** ↑*** ↑*** ↑*** ↑*** F0qq ↑* ↑*** ↑* ↑* - - - - - - References Braun A, Künzel H J (2003) The Effect of Alcohol on Speech Prosody. Proceedings of the ICPhS Barcelona, 2645. Hollien H, De Jong G, Martin C A, Schwartz R, Liljegren K (2001) Effects of Ethanol Intoxication on Speech Suprasegmentals. Journal of the Acoustical Society of America 110, 3198. Schiel F, Heinrich Chr, Barfüßer S, Gilg Th (2008) ALC Alcohol Language Corpus. Proc. of LREC 2008. Schäfer-Vincent K (1983) Pitch period detection and chaining: method and evaluation. Phonetica 1983, Vol 40, 177. Sobell L C, Sobell M B, Coleman R F (1982) Alcohol-Inducted Dysfluency in Nonalcoholics. Folia Phoniatrica 34, 316-323.                                                  1 See http://www.bas.uni-muenchen.de/Bas and Schiel et al. (2008) 2 The F statistic flattens at a degree of freedom of about 60; therefore at least 60 speakers of both sexes is desirable. 3 Some of the speakers had to be excluded because they did not articulate all of the tested vowels in all speech styles. 4 *** = p<0.001, ** = p<0.01, * = p<0.05 

Some of the speakers had to be excluded because they did not articulate all of the tested vowels in all speech styles.

The Effect of Alcohol on Speech Prosody.

The F statistic flattens at a degree of freedom of about 60; therefore at least 60 speakers of both sexes is desirable.

http://epub.ub.uni-muenchen.de/13676/1/schiel_13676.pdf

On the Effect of Alcoholisation on Fundamental Frequency

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