Session Acoustics I:Acoustics I: Speaker-Specific Aspects
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| Acoustics I-1 |
speaker normalization of fricative noise: considerations on language-specific contrast
martine toda, ENST/LTCI UMR 5141, CNRS Paper File |
| Both frication noise and vowel formants cue the place of articulation of sibilant fricatives (e.g., /s/ and /sh/ in English).However, only few studies have examined the effect of speaker-specific factors. This acoustic study of sibilant fricatives examines how speaker-specific formant information can improve the distinctness of two phonemic categories of sibilants: /s/ vs. /sh/ in French and /s/ vs. /sj/ in Japanese. The results show that the center of gravity of the frication noise, normalized with respect to the subject-specific coefficient of vowel onset or vowel center formants, in overall provide an appreciable improvement in the sibilant distinctness. While the distinctness score of the subject-normalized noise is generally higher in French than in Japanese, the F2 onset patterns (/s/ | |
| Acoustics I-2 |
ENGLISH LEXICAL STRESS CUES IN NATIVE ENGLISH AND NON-NATIVE ARABIC SPEAKERS
Wael Zuraiq, Hashemite University Joan Sereno, University of Kansas Paper File |
| Individuals who speak English as a second language vary in their ability to produce appropriate stress, which often impedes their intelligibility. The present study investigated the production of lexical stress by native speakers of English as well as learners of English. Minimal pairs were recorded by 8 native speakers of English and 8 Arabic learners of English. A second experiment examined use of acoustic cues to indicate stressed syllables in Arabic (8 speakers). In both experiments, four acoustic cues were examined: duration, fundamental frequency, amplitude, and second formant frequency. Differences in the use of these cues were observed across speaker groups (native and non-native speakers) for fundamental frequency and second formant frequency. These differences in use of cues to signal stress were only partially related to use of these acoustic cues in the speakers’ first language. | |
| Acoustics I-3 |
ACCENT MORPHING AS A TECHNIQUE TO IMPROVE THE INTELLIGIBILITY OF FOREIGN-ACCENTED SPEECH
Kayoko Yanagisawa, UCL Mark Huckvale, UCL Paper File |
| Accent morphing aims to modify the accent of a speaker whilst maintaining speaker identity. A text-independent approach could be based on voice conversion systems which manipulate speaker identity through spectral mapping. However, it is not clear to what extent accent changes can be captured with spectral mapping alone. In this paper we implement and evaluate a text-dependent accent morphing system capable of manipulating both spectral and prosodic features. We show how accent morphing can significantly improve the intelligibility of English-accented Japanese sentences to native Japanese listeners (from 57\% to 84\% words correct). Analysis of the different processing conditions shows that much of the benefit of morphing comes from integrated changes to both spectrum and prosody. This suggests that text-independent morphing is unlikely to provide anything but a small increase in intelligibility. | |