The Journal of the Acoustical Society of America, 2010
Acoustic metrics of contrastive speech rhythm, based on vocalic and intervocalic interval duratio... more Acoustic metrics of contrastive speech rhythm, based on vocalic and intervocalic interval durations, are intended to capture stable typological differences between languages. They should consequently be robust to variation between speakers, sentence materials, and measurers. This paper assesses the impact of these sources of variation on the metrics %V ͑proportion of utterance comprised of vocalic intervals͒, VarcoV ͑rate-normalized standard deviation of vocalic interval duration͒, and nPVI-V ͑a measure of the durational variability between successive pairs of vocalic intervals͒. Five measurers analyzed the same corpus of speech: five sentences read by six speakers of Standard Southern British English. Differences between sentences were responsible for the greatest variation in rhythm scores. Inter-speaker differences were also a source of significant variability. However, there was relatively little variation due to segmentation differences between measurers following an agreed protocol. An automated phone alignment process was also used: Rhythm scores thus derived showed good agreement with the human measurers. A number of recommendations for researchers wishing to exploit contrastive rhythm metrics are offered in conclusion.
Segmentation research asks how listeners locate word boundaries in the ongoing speech stream. Pre... more Segmentation research asks how listeners locate word boundaries in the ongoing speech stream. Previous work has identified multiple cues (lexical, segmental, prosodic) which affect perception of boundary placement, but such studies have almost exclusively used careful read speech, rather than speech elicited in a natural communicative context. We report development of a segmentation-oriented corpus of spontaneous speech and assess, by comparison with a parallel read speech corpus, how cues such as lexical stress and wordinitial lengthening are modulated by the nature of the communicative context, finding evidence in spontaneous speech of contextually-conditioned hypoarticulation that may impact on boundary perception.
The Journal of the Acoustical Society of America, 2010
Acoustic metrics of contrastive speech rhythm, based on vocalic and intervocalic interval duratio... more Acoustic metrics of contrastive speech rhythm, based on vocalic and intervocalic interval durations, are intended to capture stable typological differences between languages. They should consequently be robust to variation between speakers, sentence materials, and measurers. This paper assesses the impact of these sources of variation on the metrics %V ͑proportion of utterance comprised of vocalic intervals͒, VarcoV ͑rate-normalized standard deviation of vocalic interval duration͒, and nPVI-V ͑a measure of the durational variability between successive pairs of vocalic intervals͒. Five measurers analyzed the same corpus of speech: five sentences read by six speakers of Standard Southern British English. Differences between sentences were responsible for the greatest variation in rhythm scores. Inter-speaker differences were also a source of significant variability. However, there was relatively little variation due to segmentation differences between measurers following an agreed protocol. An automated phone alignment process was also used: Rhythm scores thus derived showed good agreement with the human measurers. A number of recommendations for researchers wishing to exploit contrastive rhythm metrics are offered in conclusion.
Segmentation research asks how listeners locate word boundaries in the ongoing speech stream. Pre... more Segmentation research asks how listeners locate word boundaries in the ongoing speech stream. Previous work has identified multiple cues (lexical, segmental, prosodic) which affect perception of boundary placement, but such studies have almost exclusively used careful read speech, rather than speech elicited in a natural communicative context. We report development of a segmentation-oriented corpus of spontaneous speech and assess, by comparison with a parallel read speech corpus, how cues such as lexical stress and wordinitial lengthening are modulated by the nature of the communicative context, finding evidence in spontaneous speech of contextually-conditioned hypoarticulation that may impact on boundary perception.
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Papers by Olesya Rauch