Abstract
Creaky voice occurs regularly in speech, although we are usually unaware of it. In a language such as Dutch, creaky voice is not phonemic but nevertheless often occurs as a result of changes in subglottal air pressure throughout an utterance. It has been reported that there appears to be a large amount of interspeaker variation in creaky voice (Bőhm & Shattuck-Hufnagel, 2009; Kuang, 2017; Dallaston & Docherty, 2020), but this has typically been observed incidentally and there have only been a few studies dedicated to characterising this variation.
In the current study, we have examined the conversational speech of 30 men recorded in the Corpus of Spoken Dutch (Oostdijk, 2000). Data were manually annotated for occurrences of creaky voice and each creaky interval was categorised as one of several subtypes of creaky voice based on the degree of periodicity (cf. Keating et al., 2015). Each annotated interval was also analysed acoustically with measures of f0, cepstral peak prominence, and measures of spectral balance.
Our results show that interspeaker variation in creaky voice is indeed considerable. The frequency with which creaky voice occurs ranges from very low in some speakers to notably high in others. Speakers also use the subtypes of creaky voice in different proportions. Furthermore, there are interspeaker differences in the acoustic parameters, which allows for above-chance speaker classification by means of linear discriminant analysis. These results suggest that measures of voice quality may be useful in speaker discrimination applications, such as forensic voice comparisons.
References
Bőhm, T., & Shattuck-Hufnagel, S. (2009). Do Listeners Store in Memory a Speaker’s Habitual Utterance-Final Phonation Type? Phonetica, 66, 150–168.
Dallaston K., & Docherty G. (2020). The quantitative prevalence of creaky voice (vocal fry) in varieties of English: A systematic review of the literature. PLoS ONE, 15(3): e0229960.
Keating, P., Garellek, M., & Kreiman, J. (2015). Acoustic properties of different kinds of creaky voice. In Proceedings of the 18th International Congress of Phonetic Sciences, August 10-14, Glasgow, Scotland, 2015.
Kuang, J. (2017). Covariation between voice quality and pitch: Revisiting the case of Mandarin creaky voice. The Journal of the Acoustical Society of America, 142, 1693–1706.
Oostdijk, N. (2000). Het Corpus Gesproken Nederlands. Nederlandse Taalkunde, 5, 280–284.
In the current study, we have examined the conversational speech of 30 men recorded in the Corpus of Spoken Dutch (Oostdijk, 2000). Data were manually annotated for occurrences of creaky voice and each creaky interval was categorised as one of several subtypes of creaky voice based on the degree of periodicity (cf. Keating et al., 2015). Each annotated interval was also analysed acoustically with measures of f0, cepstral peak prominence, and measures of spectral balance.
Our results show that interspeaker variation in creaky voice is indeed considerable. The frequency with which creaky voice occurs ranges from very low in some speakers to notably high in others. Speakers also use the subtypes of creaky voice in different proportions. Furthermore, there are interspeaker differences in the acoustic parameters, which allows for above-chance speaker classification by means of linear discriminant analysis. These results suggest that measures of voice quality may be useful in speaker discrimination applications, such as forensic voice comparisons.
References
Bőhm, T., & Shattuck-Hufnagel, S. (2009). Do Listeners Store in Memory a Speaker’s Habitual Utterance-Final Phonation Type? Phonetica, 66, 150–168.
Dallaston K., & Docherty G. (2020). The quantitative prevalence of creaky voice (vocal fry) in varieties of English: A systematic review of the literature. PLoS ONE, 15(3): e0229960.
Keating, P., Garellek, M., & Kreiman, J. (2015). Acoustic properties of different kinds of creaky voice. In Proceedings of the 18th International Congress of Phonetic Sciences, August 10-14, Glasgow, Scotland, 2015.
Kuang, J. (2017). Covariation between voice quality and pitch: Revisiting the case of Mandarin creaky voice. The Journal of the Acoustical Society of America, 142, 1693–1706.
Oostdijk, N. (2000). Het Corpus Gesproken Nederlands. Nederlandse Taalkunde, 5, 280–284.
Publication type
Presentation
Presentation
Abstract_DvdF2021_VanHugte_Heeren.pdf
(82.69 KB)
Year of publication
2021
Conference location
online
Conference name
Dag van de Fonetiek 2021
Publisher
Nederlandse Vereniging voor Fonetische Wetenschappen