Measuring Variations of Voice Source and Vocal Tract Characteristics from Korean Emotional Voice

Abstract

We explored the voice source and vocal tract characteristics of emotional speech to estimate the voice quality. Emotional speech data used was collected from the actors. Speech materials consist of 10 sentences from 3 male and 3 female speakers in 6 emotional states. 6 emotions are sadness, anger, happiness, fear, boredom and neutral. /a/ sound was segmented from the data used for the analysis. In terms of voice source we measured Jitter, Shimmer, NHR, pitch and pitch range. To investigate vocal tract changes, normalized vocal tract area ratios were used. Area functions were computed from the linear predictive coefficients. Vocal tract was also divided into three sections to observe the changes according to different emotions. Each computed vocal tract area part was normalized by dividing the same part of corresponding neutral speech. Jitter value was the biggest in the neutral emotion. Shimmer was similar for all the emotions except for the fear. And the fear showed the biggest value in NHR. Pitch value was elevated for all emotions except the boredom. Pitch range was the biggest in the anger. In terms of vocal tract change, there was not a remarkable difference at lip section, but the fear and sadness showed great changes at the vocal fold section.