Vowel Fundamental and Formant Frequency Contributions to English and Mandarin Sentence Intelligibility

Fogerty, Daniel1; Chen, Fei2

10.21437/Interspeech.2016-28

2016

19909772

17TH ANNUAL CONFERENCE OF THE INTERNATIONAL SPEECH COMMUNICATION ASSOCIATION (INTERSPEECH 2016), VOLS 1-5

0

1382-1386

San Francisco, CA, United states

C/O EMMANUELLE FOXONET, 4 RUE DES FAUVETTES, LIEU DIT LOUS TOURILS, BAIXAS, F-66390, FRANCE

ISCA-INT SPEECH COMMUNICATION ASSOC

The current study investigated spectral components of vowels that contribute to Mandarin and English sentence intelligibility. Sentences were processed to preserve various amounts of vowel information. Processing parameters ensured similar proportions of speech preserved between the two languages. In the first experiment, speech segments, primarily containing vocalic cues, were processed to flatten fundamental frequency (FO) cues. In the second experiment, sine-wave speech synthesis was used to coarsely code speech to retain only amplitude and frequency variation associated with the first three formants. Results demonstrated remarkable similarity between Mandarin and English sentence intelligibility with flattened FO sentences. In contrast, the intelligibility of English sentences surpassed that of Mandarin sentences for sine-wave speech. Combined with earlier reports of superior intelligibility of Mandarin sentences with full spectrum vowels, these results highlight significant contributions of Mandarin FO information, likely related to lexical tone. In contrast, English listeners may rely more on frequency and/or amplitude variation of the formants.

speech recognition vowels lexical tone interruption

其他

英语

CPCI-S ; ISSHP ; CPCI-SSH ; EI

National Institutes of Health[NIDCD R03-DC012506]

Acoustics ; Computer Science ; Engineering ; Linguistics

Acoustics ; Computer Science, Artificial Intelligence ; Engineering, Electrical & Electronic ; Linguistics

WOS:000409394400289

20170503306798

Linguistics ; Natural frequencies ; Speech communication ; Speech recognition ; Speech synthesis

Speech:751.5

Web of Science

1.Univ South Carolina, Dept Commun Sci & Disorders, Columbia, SC 29208 USA
2.Southern Univ Sci & Technol, Dept Elect & Elect Engn, Shenzhen, Peoples R China

Fogerty, Daniel,Chen, Fei. Vowel Fundamental and Formant Frequency Contributions to English and Mandarin Sentence Intelligibility[C]. C/O EMMANUELLE FOXONET, 4 RUE DES FAUVETTES, LIEU DIT LOUS TOURILS, BAIXAS, F-66390, FRANCE:ISCA-INT SPEECH COMMUNICATION ASSOC,2016:1382-1386.