Some Aspects of Fundamental Frequency and Emotional Content in Speech

Abstract

Pitch pulses were electronically derived from the utterances of six male speakers of American English who each read eight neutral test sentences in certain “emotional” modes, i.e., as a question, an objective statement, a fearful utterance, a happy utterance, etc. A fixed vowel POVO type synthesizer was excited by these pitch pulses and the resulting pitch contours recorded. The sets of test sentences and pitch contours were each placed in random sequences and separately categorized by linguistically naive listeners in forced judgment tests. Certain of the modes were not easily identified when the sole acoustic cue was the pitch contour. The results of the psychoacoustic test were then correlated with sonagraphic information.