Voice

About: Voice is a research topic. Over the lifetime, 2393 publications have been published within this topic receiving 56637 citations.

Consonant/vowel ratio as a cue for voicing in English

Abstract: Several experiments investigate voicing judgments in minimal pairs likerabid-rapid when the duration of the first vowel and the medial stop are varied factorially and other cues for voicing remain ambiguous. In Experiments 1 and 2, in which synthetic labial and velar-stop voicing pairs are investigated, the perceptual boundary along a continuum of silent consonant durations varies in constant proportion to increases in the duration of the preceding vocalic interval. In Experiment 3, it is shown that speaking tempo external to the test word has far smaller effects on a closure duration boundary for voicing than does the tempo within the test word. Experiment 4 shows that, even within the word, it is primarily the preceding vowel that accounts for changes in the consonant duration effects. Furthermore, in Experiments 3 and 4, the effects of timing outside the vowel-consonant interval are independent of the duration of that interval itself. These findings suggest that consonant/vowel ratio serves as a primary acoustic cue for English voicing in syllable-final position and imply that this ratio possibly is directly extracted from the speech signal.

The Typology of Voicing and Devoicing

Abstract: This article provides empirical evidence against the claims that [voice] is a privative feature and that word-internal devoicing can occur in a language without word-final devoicing. The study of voice patterns in a number of languages shows that the feature value [-voice] although it is the unmarked value of the laryngeal feature [voice], can be active phonologically in a fashion parallel to the marked value [+ voice]. Across languages, voice assimilation may occur independently of devoicing and, although it normally affects both [+ voice] and [-voice], it may affect only one value in some languages.

Phonetic approximation in second language acquisition1

Abstract: This instrumental study of the phonetic contrast between English /ptk/ and /bdg/ produced by Saudi Arabians reveals that native-language phonetic norms may carry over to production of target-language sounds. Despite the existence of phonetic interference, however, the present cross-sectional study suggests that Saudi learners gradually approximate the phonetic norms of English, at least insofar as several temporal acoustic correlates of stop voicing are concerned. The Saudis' English speech, although not typically Arabic or English in phonetic terms, seems to be the product of a fairly stable interlanguage phonetic system which admits the possibility of phonetic strategies by individual speakers.

Speech coding system and method using voicing probability determination

Abstract: A modular system and method is provided for encoding and decoding of speech signals using voicing probability determination. The continuous input speech is divided into time segments of a predetermined length. For each segment the encoder of the system computes the signal pitch and a parameter which is related to the relative content of voiced and unvoiced portions in the spectrum of the signal, which is expressed as a ratio Pv, defined as a voicing probability. The voiced portion of the signal spectrum, as determined by the parameter Pv, is encoded using a set of harmonically related amplitudes corresponding to the estimated pitch. The unvoiced portion of the signal is processed in a separate processing branch which uses a modified linear predictive coding algorithm. Parameters representing both the voiced and the unvoiced portions of a speech segment are combined in data packets for transmission. In the decoder, speech is synthesized from the transmitted parameters representing voiced and unvoiced portions of the speech in a reverse order. Boundary conditions between voiced and unvoiced segments are established to ensure amplitude and phase continuity for improved output speech quality. Perceptually smooth transition between frames is ensured by using an overlap and add method of synthesis. Also disclosed is the use of the system in the generation of a variety of voice effects.

Development of the Voicing Contrast: A Comparison of Voice Onset Time in Stop Perception and Production

Abstract: The acoustic cue voice onset time (VOT) was used to study development of the voicing contrast in 10 two-year-old children, 10 six-year-old children, and 20 adults. Thirty utterances of the words be...