Speaker variability in the coarticulation of /a,i,u/

Author(s): Cranen, B., Rietveld, T.

Journal/Book: Speech Commun. 1996; 18: PO Box 211, 1000 AE Amsterdam, Netherlands. Elsevier Science BV. 113-130.

Abstract: Speaker variability in the coarticulation of the vowels /a,i,u/ was investigated in /C(1)VC(2)e/ pseudo-words, containing the consonants /p,t,k,d,s,m,n,r/. These words were read out in isolation by fifteen male speakers of Dutch. The formants F-1-3 (in Bark) were extracted from the steady-state of each vowel /a,i,u/. Coarticulation in each of 1200 realisations per vowel was measured in F-1-3 as a function of consonantel context, using a score-model based measure called COART. The largest amount of coarticulation was found in /u/ where nasals and alveolars in C-1-position had the largest effect on the formant positions, especially on F-2. Coarticulation in /a,u/ proved to be speaker-specific. For these vowels the speaker variability of COART in a context was larger, generally, if COART itself was larger. Studied in a speaker identification task, finally, COART improved identification results only when three conditions were combined: (a) if COART was used as an additional parameter to F-1-3; (b) if the COART-values for the vowel were high; (c) if all vowel contexts were pooled in the analysis. The two main conclusions from this study are that coarticulation cannot be investigated speaker-independently and that COART can be contributive to speaker identification, but only in very restricted conditions.

Note: Article H Vandenheuvel, Univ Nijmegen, Dept Language & Speech, POB 9103, 6500 HB Nijmegen, Netherlands

Keyword(s): coarticulation; speaker variability; speaker identification; vowel acoustics; SPEECH; REDUCTION

Zurück | Weiter