Modelling and ranking of differences across formants of british, australian and american accents

Abstract

The differences between formants of British, Australian and American English accents are analysed and ranked. An improved formant model based on linear prediction (LP) feature analysis and a two-dimensional(2D) hidden Markov model (HMM) of formants is employed for estimation of the formant frequencies and bandwidths of vowels and diphthongs. Comparative analysis of the formant trajectories, the formant target points and the bandwidth of the spectral resonance at formants of British, Australian and American accents are presented. British vowels and diphthongs have smaller formant bandwidth than Australian. A method for ranking the contribution of different formants in conveying an accent is proposed whereby formants are ranked according to the normalized distances between the formants across accents. The first two formants are considered more sensitive to accents than other formants.