Voice

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

Speech analysis method and speech synthesis system

Abstract: A speech segment to be analyzed is cut out with a window having a length of a plurality of pitch periods for RK model voicing source parameter estimation. GCIs are all estimated for a plurality of voicing source pulses. Based on such estimations, an RK model voicing source waveform is generated, its relationship with the speech segment is analyzed by ARX system identification, and then a glottal transform function is estimated. While this process repeated, when GCIs converge at a predetermined value, the identification is completed. Accordingly, a high quality analysis-synthesis system, which isolates voicing source parameters of speech signals from vocal tract parameters thereof with high accuracy, can be realized.

Pre-aspiration in Welsh English : a case study of Aberystwyth

Abstract: This thesis examines the phonetic, phonological, and social aspects of pre-aspiration in English spoken in Aberystwyth, mid Wales. Pre-aspiration refers to a period of voiceless (primarily) glottal friction occurring in the sequences of sonorants and phonetically voiceless obstruents (e.g. in mat [mahts] or mass [mahs]). Chapter 1 summarises the objectives of this thesis and where the thesis is positioned with respect to our current knowledge of the phenomenon and the relevant theoretical issues. Chapter 2 introduces the data used to address these objectives.Pre-aspiration is usually considered as consisting of a voiced glottal component, or breathiness, and a voiceless glottal component, or voiceless pre-aspiration, and these are treated as a single unit in a number of analyses (Helgason 2003; Helgason & Ringen 2008; Karlsson & Svantesson 2011; Morris 2010; Ringen & van Dommelen 2013; Stevens & Hajek 2004b, 2004c; Stevens 2010, 2011). Chapter 3 shows that this is not adequate because distinguishing the two enables us to discover patterns that would remain obscured otherwise ? such as breathiness being a possible precursor to pre-aspiration. This is demonstrated through the segmental and prosodic conditioning of pre-aspiration and breathiness.Chapter 4 shows that although pre-aspiration is not an obligatory feature of Aberystwyth English (in the sense that it would occur in 100% of time where it can), it nevertheless forms two clear categories sensitive to phonological rather than phonetic vowel height. However, phonological vowel height on its own cannot explain these two categories and interacts with a number of other conditioning factors.Whilst Chapter 3 investigates the relationship between pre-aspiration and breathiness, Chapter 5 looks into that of pre-aspiration and glottalisation and demonstrates that the two can occur in the same environment, which enlightens the debates related to the historical connections between pre-aspiration and glottalisation in particular (e.g. Kortland 1988). It furthermore reveals that although it is not known why they are co-occurring for some speakers and mutually exclusive or allophonic for others, their relationship is conditioned prosodically and not segmentally.Chapter 6 illustrates that pre-aspiration is an acoustic correlate of the fortis-lenis contrast in plosives in production at least equally well as breathiness, voicing, release duration, or the duration of the preceding vowel, and better than voiceless closure duration, glottalisation, or f0 before or after the plosive in question in the word-medial (cotter [kh?hts?] ~ codder [kh?d?]) and the word-final positions (cot ~ cod). It is therefore at least as important as the other four correlates.Chapter 7 finds that pre-aspiration also exhibits social conditioning. Females pre-aspirate more frequently than males, which is often found in pre-aspiration studies, but this difference disappears as the age decreases. Furthermore, the frequency of breathiness, and the duration of pre-aspiration and breathiness are not conditioned by gender. However, all four variables are affected by age. Pre-aspiration thus seems to be undergoing an advancing sound change according to Labov?s Principle II (2001: 292) and breathiness seems to be its precursor. Chapter 8 summarises the results and outlines questions for further research.

Acquisition of voicing neutralization and alternations in Dutch

Abstract: An eminent study in morphological acquisition is Jean Berko’s (1958) paper entitled “The child’s learning of English morphology”. In her study, she examined children’s productive knowledge of English allomorphs using a methodology called the Wug Test. Children were tested on their application of plural allomorphs: English words ending in final voiced obstruents, sonorants, and vowels take a /-z/ suffix (e.g. dogs [dgz]), words ending in final voiceless obstruents take a /-s/ suffix (e.g. cats [kaets]) and words with final sibilants take an /z/ suffix (e.g. buses [bs z]). To test productive knowledge, children were shown pictures of non-words in the singular and asked for the plural, as for nonwords they cannot fall back on memory. For example, “This is a wug. Now there is another one. There are two of them. There are two _____ (p. 165)”. Berko found that while children aged four and five years displayed some productive knowledge, they were variable in their application of the different allomorphs. This example of plural suffix allomorphy shows how morphology (i.e. adding a plural suffix) and phonology (classically thought to involve voicing assimilation and vowel insertion) can interact. The suffix alternation is thought to be both regular and productive, which means it is acquired relatively early (Bernhardt & Stemberger, 1998). Since the publication of Berko’s study, the Wug Test has been used to look at first and second language acquisition (Snow & Hoefnagel-Hoehle, 1978), in children with Specific Language Impairments (Goad & Rebellati, 1994; Leonard, Eyer, Bedore & Grela, 1997; Oetting & Rice, 1993), and in a variety of phonological and morphological contexts (most famously the English past tense) across different languages such as Dutch (Kerkhoff, 2004), Hungarian (MacWhinney, 1978), Spanish (Bybee & Pardo, 1981; Kernan & Blount, 1966),

The Weight of Phonetic Substance in the Structure of Sound Inventories

Abstract: In the research field initiated by Lindblom & Liljencrants in 1972, we illustrate the possibility of giving substance to phonology, predicting the structure of phonological systems with nonphonological principles, be they listener-oriented (perceptual contrast and stability) or speaker-oriented (articulatory contrast and economy). We proposed for vowel systems the Dispersion-Focalisation Theory (Schwartz et al., 1997b). With the DFT, we can predict vowel systems using two competing perceptual constraints weighted with two parameters, respectively λ and α. The first one aims at increasing auditory distances between vowel spectra (dispersion), the second one aims at increasing the perceptual salience of each spectrum through formant proximities (focalisation). We also introduced new variants based on research in physics - namely, phase space (λ,α) and polymorphism of a given phase, or superstructures in phonological organisations (Vallee et al., 1999) which allow us to generate 85.6% of 342 UPSID systems from 3- to 7-vowel qualities. No similar theory for consonants seems to exist yet. Therefore we present in detail a typology of consonants, and then suggest ways to explain plosive vs. fricative and voiceless vs. voiced consonants predominances by i) comparing them with language acquisition data at the babbling stage and looking at the capacity to acquire relatively different linguistic systems in relation with the main degrees of freedom of the articulators; ii) showing that the places “preferred” for each manner are at least partly conditioned by the morphological constraints that facilitate or complicate, make possible or impossible the needed articulatory gestures, e.g. the complexity of the articulatory control for voicing and the aerodynamics of fricatives. A rather strict coordination between the glottis and the oral constriction is needed to produce acceptable voiced fricatives (Mawass et al., 2000). We determine that the region where the combinations of Ag (glottal area) and Ac (constriction area) values results in a balance between the voice and noise components is indeed very narrow. We thus demonstrate that some of the main tendencies in the phonological vowel and consonant structures of the world’s languages can be explained partly by sensorimotor constraints, and argue that actually phonology can take part in a theory of Perception-for-Action-Control.

Use of complex phonological patterns in speech processing : evidence from Korean

Abstract: Korean has a very complex phonology, with many interacting alternations. In a coronal-/i/ sequence, depending on the type of phonological boundary present, alternations such as palatalization, nasal insertion, nasal assimilation, coda neutralization, and intervocalic voicing can apply. This paper investigates how the phonological patterns of Korean affect processing of morphemes and words. Past research on languages such as English, German, Dutch, and Finnish has shown that listeners exploit syllable structure constraints in processing speech and segmenting it into words. The current study shows that in parsing speech, listeners also use much more complex patterns that relate the surface phonological string to various boundaries.