The work described investigated the ability of listeners to identify familiar speakers solely on the basis of suprasegmental laryngeal information. The results of perceptual experiments using both natural stimuli, and synthetic stimuli with manipulations in the time and frequency domains, show that mean fundamental frequency and fundamental-frequency contour shape provide important speaker identifying information for an age-, sex- and accent- matched group even in the absence of all supraglottal features. The investigation is set in the context of the normalisation level of speech perception.
Get full access to this article
View all access options for this article.
References
1.
Abberton, E., (1976). A Laryngographic Study of Voice Quality. Ph.D. thesis, University of London.
2.
Ashby, M.G. and Fisher, J., (1974). Programs for synthesizer control. Speech and Hearing: Work in Progress, University College London, Department of Phonetics and Linguistics. Chapter III.
3.
Atal, B.S., (1969). Automatic Speaker Recognition based on Pitch Contours. Ph.D. Thesis, Polytechnic Institution of Brooklyn.
4.
Brown, B.L., Strong, W.J. and Rencher, A.C., (1974). Fifty-four voices from two: the effects of simultaneous manipulations of rate, mean fundamental frequency, and variance of fundamental frequency on ratings of personality from speech. J. acoust. Soc. Amer., 55, 313–8.
5.
Chan, A., (1971). A Perceptual Study of Cantonese Tones. Ph.D. thesis, University of London.
6.
Doehring, D.G. and Ross, R.W., (1972). Voice recognition by matching to sample. J. Psycholing. Res., 1, 233–42.
7.
Fourcin, A.J., (1968). Speech source inference. I.E.E.E. Trans. on Audio and Electroacoustics, AU-16, No. 1, 65–7.
8.
Fourcin, A.J., (1972). Perceptual mechanisms at the first level of speech perception. In A. Rigauit (Ed.), Proc. 7th Int. Congr. Phonetic Sci. (The Hague), 48–62.
9.
Fourcin, A.J., (1975). Laryngographic examination of vocal fold vibration. In B. Wyke (Ed.), Ventilatory and Phonatory Control Mechanisms (Oxford), 315–33.
10.
Fourcin, A.J., (1978). Acoustic patterns and speech acquisition. In N. Waterson and C. Snow (Eds.), The Development of Communication (New York), 144–71.
11.
Fourcin, A.J. and Abberton, E., (1972). First applications of a new laryngograph. Volta Review, 74, 3, 161–76.
12.
Green, N., (1972). Automatic speaker recognition using pitch measurements in conversational speech. Joint Speech Research Unit, Report No. 1000.
13.
Hecker, M., (1971). Speaker Recognition: an Interpretive Survey of the Literature. A.S.H.A. Monogr. No. 16, Washington, D.C.
14.
Janota, P., (1967). Personal Characteristics of Speech. Trans. of the Czechoslovak Academy of Sciences - Social Sciences Series, Vol. 77, No. 1.
15.
Lariviere, C., (1972). Acoustic and perceptual correlates to aural speaker identification. In. A. Rigault (Ed.), Proc. 7th Int. Congr. Phonetic Sci., (The Hague), 558–64.
16.
Mead, K.O., (1974). Identification of speakers from fundamental frequency contours in conversational speech. Joint Speech Research Unit, Report No. 1002.
17.
Mickey, K., (1977). On “high” and “low” in English. Language and Speech, 20, 20–39.
18.
Miller, J.E., (1964). Decapitation and recapitation, a study of voice quality. J. acoust. Soc. Amer., 36, 2002(A).
19.
Shearme, J.N. and Holmes, J.N., (1959). An experiment concerning the recognition of voices. Language and Speech, 2, 123–31.
20.
Verbrugge, R.R., Strange, W., Shankweiler, D.P., and Edman, T.R., (1976). What information enables a listener to map a talker's vowel space?J. acoust. Soc. Amer., 60, 198–212.
