Non‐F0 correlates of prosody in free conversation

Abstract

Expressive features may have physical correlates of a large variety, including (1) formant patterns; (2) voice source spectrum slope; (3) other voice quality characteristics, e.g., vocal fry; and (4) phrasing. For a given sentence (for which the intonational pattern is described) can these articulatory and laryngeal variations be predicted, depending on expressive conditions, and if so, how? A number of free conversations were recorded and analyzed in terms of their F0, F1, F2, voice quality and durational characteristics. For a comparison with a similar, controlled set of utterances, the same speakers (a) read parts of their recorded conversations (from an orthographic transcription) and (b) imitated their own speech after listening to parts of their recorded conversation. The acoustic signals were analyzed, comparing the three different situations. Initial analysis suggests that indeed there is independent control of articulatory and voice quality correlates. The question whether these physical correlates are completely representable by the current intonation theory will be discussed.