• Phonetics and Speech Sciences
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• v.7 no.2
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• pp.85-94
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• 2015

This study is to investigate the characteristic of tonal elements in word utterance of 30 pre-school children. For the analyses, 240 utterances of 4 syllable words were processed to extract acoustic values and then the data was transformed into tonal height in order to examine the contour. The results show that the mean pitch of a note is $C4{\frac{1}{2}}(271.17Hz)$ and high and low pitched notes are $C5{\frac{1}{2}}(452.57Hz)$ and $G{\sharp}3{\frac{1}{2}}(192.54Hz)$. The pitch patterns of the 4 syllables measured at the frication and aspiration portion are $E4{\frac{1}{2}}-F4-B3{\frac{1}{2}}-A3$ and F4-E4-B3-A3. The pitch patterns of consonant clusters are $B3{\frac{1}{2}}-D4-B3{\frac{1}{2}}-A3{\frac{1}{2}}$ and $A{\sharp}3{\frac{1}{2}}-C4-A3-D4{\frac{1}{2}}$. The analyses of tonal elements in this study provide evidentiary data on tonal height helpful for developing melodic contour.

• Journal of the Institute of Convergence Signal Processing
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• v.5 no.1
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• pp.1-5
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• 2004

A new method for the estimation of pitch-frequency contour of voiced speech is presented. The method is based on the double application of Kaiser's energy operator［1］, which has the capabilities of extracting amplitude and frequency of a sinusoidal waveform. According to the modulation model, a vowel can be represented by a combination of damped sinusoids representing formants, modulated by pitch pulses. Therefore, the amplitude envelope of each of the components will give a pitch-like waveform and the pitch can be obtained by averaging the frequencies of this waveform. The first part is the same as Gopalan's approach［9］, but by substituting the LPC based spectral analysis with the second application of energy operator, the algorithm becomes very simple and can be processed on-line. Although the estimation is rather coarse, the suggested algorithm can be useful for getting a general sketch of pitch contour on-line.

• Phonetics and Speech Sciences
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• v.4 no.1
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• pp.55-65
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• 2012

In this study, the prosodic disambiguation of the syntactic attachment differences was investigated in relation to the effect of lexical bias. Speech materials were composed of N1-conj-N2-PP phrases such as "walkers and runners with dogs." The results show that the use of durational pattern is dominant over the pitch pattern to differentiate the attachment differences. The characteristic pitch contour was the rise and fall over N1 and N2 in the high attachment. The pitch contour in the low attachment was the rise and fall over N2 and N3 although the frequency of such patterns was lower for the low attachment case. For the durational pattern, the lengthening in the N2 region plays a significant role in the disambiguation of the syntactic attachments. The interaction between the lexical bias and the syntactic attachment was not statistically significant in the duration data.

• Proceedings of the Acoustical Society of Korea Conference
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• 1994.06c
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• pp.42-47
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• 1994

A pitch detector is an essential component in a variety of speech processing systems. Besides providing valuable insights into the nature of the exciation source for speech production, the pitch contour of an utterance is useful for recognizing speakers, aids-to-the handicapped, and is required in almost all speech analysis-synthesis system. Because of the importance of the pitch detection, a wide variety algorithms for pitch detection have been proposed in speech procesing literature. Thus, in this paper we discuss th evarious type of pitch detection algorithms which have been proposed until now. Then we provide th eperformance measurements for seven pitch detection algorithms.

• Phonetics and Speech Sciences
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• v.3 no.2
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• pp.37-52
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• 2011

This study investigates patterns of the alignment of the accentual peaks in bisyllabic words of the CVNCV, CVNV, and CVNNV structures in North Kyungsang Korean. Based on the tonal alignment, patterns of the F0 pitch excursion are discussed relative to one another. Issues are addressed concerning how the tonal targets are aligned, and how the tonal specifications of nasals in postvocalic, intervocalic, and prevocalic environments are supplied in the LH, HL, and HH classes. Tonal specification of nasals in various environments is accounted for by extension of the L target, displacement of the pitch peak, and interpolation between two tonal targets, depending on the tonal class. The results in this study provide preliminary evidence that the categorical alignment of the tonal targets is implemented by simply checking the presence or absence of a nasal before or after the nucleus vowel on the segmental string, without reference to the constituency of the nasal in the syllable structure. However, the prosodic structure has a key role to play in explaining speaker-dependent variations in the tonal alignment. Sensitivity to tautosyllabicity has an effect on the shape of the F0 contour, and disparity in the patterns of the pitch excursion is represented as a function of syllable structure correlated with segmental composition of the nasal.

• The Journal of the Acoustical Society of Korea
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• v.15 no.6
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• pp.26-32
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• 1996

In this paper we make a rule of pitch variation for a natural synthetic female voice. Intonation phrase, which is the basic unit the rule is applied to, mostly consists of a syllable or syllables. The pitch values of the first, second, and final syllables make up the pitch contour of the intonation phrase. Those of the first and second syllable are determined by the initial consonants of the respective syllables, and that of the final syllable by the type of the function word. There are two kinds of boundaries between intonation phrases. One is a boundary with pause, and the other is a boundary without pause. The pitch contour of the intonation phrase with the boundary phenomena determines the pitch pattern of a sentence.

• Journal of Biomedical Engineering Research
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• v.20 no.4
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• pp.427-433
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• 1999

The purpose of the study is to develop an improved pitch extraction method that can be used in a variety of speech applications such as high-puality compression and vocoding, and recognition and synthesis of speech. To do so, we develop a new electroglottograph (EGG) measurement system that is based on the four modulation-demodulation type spot electrodes for detecting the EGG signals. Then, the glottal closure instant(GCI) is determined from the EGG signals on a real-time basis. We can obtain the pitch contour using the information on the GCI. It turns out that the new pitch contour algorithm (PCA) operates more reliably as compared to the conventional speech-only-based algorithm. In addition, we study the speech source models and glottal vibratory patterns for Koreans by measuring and analyzing the diversified vibration patterns of the vocal from the EGG signals.

• Proceedings of the Acoustical Society of Korea Conference
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• 1994.06c
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• pp.107-110
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• 1994

In this paper, we describe the features of the fundamental frequency contour of Korean read speech, and propose a new stylization method to characterize the Fø pattern of segments. Our algorithm consists of three stylization processes : the segment level, the syllable level, and the sord level. For stylization of Fø contour in the segment level , we applied least square error minimization method to determine Fø values at initial, medial, and final position in a segment. In the syllable level, we determine the stylized Fø pattern of a syllable using the mean Fø value of each word and style information for each word, syllable and segment, we reconstruct Fø contour of sentences. The simulation results show that the error is less than 10% of the actual Fø contour for each sentence. In perception test, there is little difference between the synthesized speech with the original difference between the synthesized speech with the original Fø contour and the synthesized speech with the stylized Fø contour.

• Phonetics and Speech Sciences
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• v.6 no.4
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• pp.53-65
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• 2014

The current research examines whether pitch contour shapes in North Kyungsang pitch accent contrasts provide a phonetic dimension for phonological discreteness in a mimicry task. Two pitch accent continua resynthesized were created for HH vs. HL and HH vs. LH. To confirm a phonetic dimension for accounting for pitch accent categories in North Kyungsang Korean, the mimicries of speakers of two dialects (i.e., North Kyungsang & South Cholla) were compared. One of the findings showed that, for North Kyungsang speakers, the range of mean f0 peak times was a phonetic dimension undergoing a continuous shift within a stimulus continuum for both HH vs. HL and HH vs. LH. On the other hand, for South Cholla speakers, there were no apparent shifts around categorical boundaries for either HH vs. HL or HH vs. LH. Regarding individual mimicries on f0 peak timing, there are many variations. For HH vs. LH, three North Kyungsang speakers showed a discrete pattern reflecting a shift in phonological categories, but for HH vs. HL, there was no such distinction showing a categorical shift, though there were statistically significant differences for two speakers. Interestingly, one of the North Kyungsang speakers showed a continuous phonetic dimension for both HH vs. HL and HH vs. LH. Lastly, the f0 valley timing did not exhibit a discrete or gradient phonetic dimension for speakers of either dialect. On the basis of these results, what is interesting is that the tonal target such as high tone in North Kyungsang pitch accent categories within the autosegmental-metrical (AM) theory may be realized within individual cognitive systems for representing the interaction of perception and production.

• Phonetics and Speech Sciences
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• v.6 no.3
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• pp.131-138
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• 2014

A close-copy stylization of intonation curve was used for an acoustical analysis of emotional speech. For the analysis, 408 utterances of five emotions (happiness, anger, fear, neutral and sadness) were processed to extract acoustical feature values. The results show that certain pitch point features (pitch point movement time and pitch point distance within a sentence) and sentence level features (pitch range of a final pitch point, pitch range of a sentence and pitch slope of a sentence) are affected by emotions. Pitch point movement time, pitch point distance within a sentence and pitch slope of a sentence show no significant difference between male and female participants. The emotions with high arousal (happiness and anger) are consistently distinguished from the emotion with low arousal (sadness) in terms of these acoustical features. Emotions with higher arousal show steeper pitch slope of a sentence. They have steeper pitch slope at the end of a sentence. They also show wider pitch range of a sentence. The acoustical analysis in this study implies the possibility that the measurement of these acoustical features can be used to cluster and identify emotions of speech.