Yoshiho Shibuya

Exploratory study of some acoustic and articulatory characteristics of sad speech.

This study examines acoustic and articulatory EMA data of two female speakers (American and Japanese) spontaneously producing emotional speech while engaged in an informal telephone-type conversation. A set of control data in which the speakers imitated or read the original emotional utterance was also recorded; for the American speaker, the intonation pattern was also imitated. The results suggest (1) acoustic and articulatory characteristics of spontaneous sad speech differ from that of read speech or imitated intonation speech, (2) spontaneous sad speech and imitated sad speech seem to have similar acoustic characteristics (high F0, changed F1 as well as voice quality), but articulation is different in terms of lip, jaw and tongue positions, and (3) speech that is rated highly by listeners as sad is associated with high F0 and changed voice quality.

Metrical Structure and Production of English Rhythm

This paper examines kinematic patterns of jaw opening and associated F1 values of 4 American English speakers in productions of the sentence ‘I saw five bright highlights in the sky’. Results show strong-weak jaw opening alternations during the production of the utterance, and significant correlation of F1 with jaw opening for 3 of the 4 speakers. The observed jaw opening patterns correspond to metrically generated syllable stress levels for productions of the sentence by these 4 speakers.

Comparative electromagnetic articulographic study of English rhythm as produced by native and non-native speakers

Previous work suggests that concurrent changes in jaw displacement and formant frequencies may manifest rhythm of spoken American English utterances [e.g., Erickson, in Proceedings of the Speech Prosody 2010, Chicago (May 2010), p. 1]. This paper compares jaw displacement and corresponding formant frequencies of monosyllabic American English words produced on low vowels in four word phrases with varying positions of emphasis as spoken by three native speakers and three Japanese speakers of English. Preliminary findings suggest an alternating pattern of strong-weak jaw displacement along with corresponding formant changes for the native speakers. This pattern was not consistently seen for the non-native speakers and seemed to vary as a function of their skill-level in spoken English.