Time-varying spectral change in the vowels of children and adults

Peter F. Assmann · William F. Katz

99 citations0/0 files storedThe Journal of the Acoustical Society of America

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Phonetics and Phonology Research Language Development and Disorders Voice and Speech Disorders

Abstract

Recent studies have shown that time-varying changes in formant pattern contribute to the phonetic specification of vowels. This variation could be especially important in children's vowels, because children have higher fundamental frequencies (f0's) than adults, and formant-frequency estimation is generally less reliable when f0 is high. To investigate the contribution of time-varying changes in formant pattern to the identification of children's vowels, three experiments were carried out with natural and synthesized versions of 12 American English vowels spoken by children (ages 7, 5, and 3 years) as well as adult males and females. Experiment 1 showed that (i) vowels generated with a cascade formant synthesizer (with hand-tracked formants) were less accurately identified than natural versions; and (ii) vowels synthesized with steady-state formant frequencies were harder to identify than those which preserved the natural variation in formant pattern over time. The decline in intelligibility was similar across talker groups, and there was no evidence that formant movement plays a greater role in children's vowels compared to adults. Experiment 2 replicated these findings using a semi-automatic formant-tracking algorithm. Experiment 3 showed that the effects of formant movement were the same for vowels synthesized with noise excitation (as in whispered speech) and pulsed excitation (as in voiced speech), although, on average, the whispered vowels were less accurately identified than their voiced counterparts. Taken together, the results indicate that the cues provided by changes in the formant frequencies over time contribute materially to the intelligibility of vowels produced by children and adults, but these time-varying formant frequency cues do not interact with properties of the voicing source.

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References

1952Control Methods Used in a Study of the Vowels 1995Acoustic characteristics of American English vowels 1998The sounds of the world’s languages. By Peter Ladefoged and Ian Maddieson. Oxford Cambridge, MA: Blackwell, 1996. Pp. xxi, 426. Paper $31.95.1999Acoustics of children’s speech: Developmental changes of temporal and spectral parameters 1955Acoustic Loci and Transitional Cues for Consonants 1989Static, dynamic, and relational properties in vowel perception 1976Anatomical and Neuromuscular Maturation of the Speech Mechanism: Evidence from Acoustic Studies 1969Development of speech sounds in children.

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