Acoustic characteristics of clearly produced fricatives

Abstract

Research suggests that speakers can adopt a speaking style that allows them to be understood more easily when confronted with difficult communication situations, but few studies have examined the acoustic properties of clearly produced consonants in detail. This study attempts to characterize the type and magnitude of adaptations in the clear production of English fricatives in a carefully controlled range of communication situations. Ten female and ten male talkers produced nonsense syllables containing the eight English fricatives in VCV contexts, both in a conversational style and in a clear style (elicited by means of feedback consisting of simulated recognition errors received from an interactive computer program). Acoustic measurements were taken for spectral, amplitudinal, and temporal properties known to influence fricative recognition. Results illustrate that (1) there were some consistent overall clear speech effects, several of which (consonant duration, spectral peak location, spectral moments) were consistent with previous findings and a few (notably consonant-to-vowel intensity ratio) which were not; (2) ‘‘contrastive’’ differences related to eliciting prompts were observed in a few key comparisons; and (3) talkers differed widely in the types and magnitude of acoustic modifications.