Lurdes de Castro Moutinho

Para a melhoria da síntese articulatória das vogais nasais do português europeu: estudo da duração e de características relacionadas com a fonte glotal

The aim of this research was to continue the work in articulatory synthesis. Thus, a database was collected, containing the nasal sounds of European Portuguese (EP). This corpus includes the different phonetic contexts for the nasal vowels of EP, focusing on the regional variants. The recordings include voice signal, and, simultaneously,information about glottal source, obtained through an Electroglotograph (EGG). After the signal processing the following parameters were analysed:duration, F0, open quotient, jitter and shimmer. Finally, statistical and inferential analysis was made using the programme SPSS.

Experimental phonetics contributions to the Portuguese articulatory synthesizer development

In this paper we present current work and results in two Experimental Phonetics projects motivated by our ongoing development of an articulatory synthesizer for Portuguese. Examples of analyses and results regarding glottal source parameters and from EMMA and acoustic analyses related to the tongue position are presented. In our studies contextual and regional variation is considered.

Voice quality of psychological origin

Variations in voice quality are essentially related to modifications of the glottal source parameters, such as: F0, jitter, and shimmer. Voice quality is affected by prosody, emotional state, and vocal pathologies. Psychogenic vocal pathology is particularly interesting. In the present case study, the speaker naturally presented a ventricular band voice whereas in a controlled production he was able to use a more normal phonation process. A small corpus was recorded which included sustained vowels and short sentences in both registers. A normal speaker was also recorded in similar tasks. Annotation and extraction of parameters were made using Praats voice report function. Application of the Hoarseness Diagram to sustained productions situates this case in the pseudo‐glottic phonation region. Analysis of several different parameters related to F0, jitter, shimmer, and harmonicity revealed that the speaker with psychogenic voice was capable of controlling certain parameters (e.g. F0 maximum) but was unable to correct others such as shimmer.

Análise comparada de três padrões prosódicos em francês e em português europeu

Notre objectif est d’effectuer une comparaison entre trois types destructures prosodiques (declarative, imperative et interrogative)realisees dans deux langues romanes de type accentuel different: lefrancais (accent rythmique) et le portugais europeen (accent lexical).Pour chaque langue, le corpus est constitue d’une phrase lexicalementambigue prononcee par un locuteur masculin natif. Les phrases dansles deux langues ont une structure globale tres voisine, afin de favoriserleur comparaison. Les parametres retenus pour l’analyse sont lafrequence fondamentale Fo, la duree et l’intensite des voyelles. Lacomparaison porte d’une part sur les differences entre les troisstructures prosodiques pour une meme langue, puis sur les differencesinter-langues pour un meme patron prosodique.Les conclusions montrent, au-dela des particularites individuellespropres aux locuteurs, et malgre la nature accentuelle differente desdeux langues, que les strategies prosodiques utilisees sont en fait tresvoisines pour la declarative et l’imperative. En revanche, l’interrogativesemble realisee de maniere tres differente par les deux locuteurs,tous en presentant neanmoins certains points communs.