Syllable Duration Research Articles

Can a neurotypical actor align their speech acoustically to autistic speech patterns for roles in the media?

Canonically autistic characters are represented in television, but these roles have often been filled by neurotypical actors. One criterion of autism diagnoses includes differences in speech, often described as “monotonic” or “robotic.” This study comparatively analyzed the speech of a neurotypical actor in an autistic role with that of autistic actors within neutral and emotional conditions. Acoustic measures included fundamental frequency (F0), duration, and intensity. Speech samples (n = 87) were collected from the television show Atypical and acoustically analyzed using PRAAT. Results showed that the F0 range, syllable duration range, and intensity range for the neurotypical actor in the autistic role was significantly more similar to neurotypical actors than autistic actors, though the change in syllable duration between conditions was significantly more similar to autistic actors. Additionally, a survey was developed in which participants listened to audio clips of the speech samples rating them on a Likert scale of “typical” to “atypical.” Results showed that the neurotypical actor in the autistic role was rated as atypical. Overall, it was concluded that neurotypical actors may not acoustically align with autistic actors, but they are successful in the perceived effect of atypicality based on the perception of their speech patterns by an audience.

Does language matter in oral diadochokinesis (DDK) performances?

Oral diadochokinesis (DDK) typically refers to rapid repetitions of monosyllables (e.g., /pʌ/, /tʌ/, /kʌ/) or multisyllables (e.g., /pʌtʌkʌ/). DDK has been frequently included in studies of motor development and disorders and its use has increased over the past decade. One unanswered question in using DDK for investigation of speech motor control is whether the studied language serves as an important factor in DDK performances. Despite the general agreement that DDK performance (mostly DDK rates) is little affected by a speaker’s native language, few data exist on language- or dialect-specific effects on DDK, which may be explained by factors such as speaking rate and rhythmic pattern of the languages. In this study, we compare DDK performances in two languages, American English (AE) and Korean, which were chosen primarily because of the difference in their rhythmic patterns (stressed-timed versus syllable-timed). A total of 80 young adults (40 AE-, 40 Korean-speakers) performed both mono- and multi-syllable repetitions and analysis was limited to the first 5 seconds of each performance. We will present data on several aspects of DDK performance focusing on prosodic patterns (syllable and intersyllable pause durations, intensity, and F0 across syllables) in addition to average DDK rates.

Acoustic and articulatory modifications of Mandarin vowels in clear and Lombard speech

This study investigated the acoustic modifications of Mandarin vowels /a, i, u/ in clear speech and Lombard speech. Their underlying articulatory movements in the tongue and lips were also examined using ultrasound imaging and lip videos. Plain (i.e., conversational), clear and Lombard speech productions were elicited through a series of map tasks, where participants were prompted by pre-recorded videos to interact with the listener on the screen. Results showed that clear and Lombard speech in Mandarin resulted in longer syllable duration as well as greater vowel RMS intensity than plain speech. Spectrally, not all three vowels were modified to enhance their phonological features in response to clear or Lombard speech conditions. However, the differential F1/F2 modifications did result in an expanded vowel space. Some associations and mismatches between F1/F2 measurements and articulatory movements were observed. Particularly, greater mouth opening and lowering of tongue body in /a/ in clear and Lombard speech could account for the raising of F1. Few modifications in /i/ tongue position and lip configurations also corresponded to no significant F1/F2 change. The acoustic-articulatory relationship for /u/, in contrast, was less straightforward. These observations are discussed in relation to existing clear speech and Lombard speech literature.

Early prosodic marking of irony and its perception in autistic and neurotypical adults

The present study examines the utterance-initial prosodic marking of irony and its perception in neurodiverse populations. We ask (i) whether speakers and listeners use prosody to mark irony in the early, “pre-target” portion of an utterance (before a “target” word most closely associated with ironic intent), (ii) whether individuals vary in how they mark irony, and (iii) whether listener accuracy varies by speaker or autism condition. Eight American English speakers were recorded producing utterances presented in contexts conducive to either irony or sincerity. The “pre-target” parts were presented in a forced-choice experiment to 55 autistic and 45 neurotypical listeners and were examined for syllable duration and F0-related properties (maximum, minimum, range, mean, and wiggliness [Wehrle, Cangemi, Krüger, & Grice. (2018) Proceedings of AISV]). Results show that speakers mark irony in the “pre-target” region, with duration being the most salient feature, and wiggliness and F0-range being variable. Most listeners recognize irony from “pre-target” fragments, but there is variation in how well each speaker is perceived. Whether the listener is autistic or neurotypical does not predict accuracy. Results, thus, show utterance-initial prosodic marking to contribute to irony recognition, with the proviso that speaker and listener variation be taken into account.

Calling vocatives duration in Libolo Portuguese

Abstract This paper aims to study two types of distinct vocatives in absolute position in Portuguese of Libolo (Angola), a barely studied African variety of Portuguese: the initial call and the insistent call. The results reveal that: (i) long postonic syllables characterize the two types of calls; (ii) there is greater variability in the duration of the postonic syllable of insistent calls; (iii) the duration is a robust correlate that distinguishes these two types of vocatives; and (iv) insistent calls are longer, both concerning the total duration of the utterance and in relation to the duration of each syllable (that is, there is an additive effect). These results are supported by statistical analyses. It was proved that the difference in duration between initial and insistent calls in Libolo Portuguese is statistically significant. Furthermore, Bayesian analyses not only conferred greater reliability on the results of the initial analyses, since it is a small dataset, but also provided a greater understanding of the relationship between the two types of vocatives, regarding the greater variability of results of the insistent call.

Normative Values for Word Syllable Duration With Interpretation in a Large Sample of Stroke Survivors With Aphasia.

Slow speech rate and abnormal temporal prosody are primary diagnostic criteria for differentiating between people with aphasia who do and do not have apraxia of speech. We sought to identify appropriate cutoff values for abnormal word syllable duration (WSD) in a word repetition task, interpret them relative to a data set of people with chronic aphasia, and evaluate the extent to which manually derived measures could be approximated through an automated process that relied on commercial speech recognition technology. Fifty neurotypical participants produced 49 multisyllabic words during a repetition task. Audio recordings were submitted to an automated speech recognition (ASR) service (IBM Watson) to measure word duration and generate an orthographic transcription. The transcribed words were compared to a lexical database, and the number of syllables was identified. Automatic and manual measures were compared for 50% of the sample. Results were interpreted relative to WSD scores from an existing data set of 195 people with mostly chronic aphasia. ASR correctly identified 83% of target words and 98% of target syllable counts. Automated word duration calculations were longer than manual measures due to imprecise cursor placement. Upon applying regression coefficients to the automated measures and examining the frequency distributions for both manual and estimated measures, a WSD of 303-316 ms was found to indicate longer-than-normal performance (corresponding to the 95th percentile). With this cutoff, 40%-45% of participants with aphasia in our comparison sample had an abnormally long WSD. We recommend using a rounded WSD cutoff score between 303 and 316 ms for manual measures. Future research will focus on customizing automated WSD methods to speech samples from people with aphasia, identifying target words that maximize production and measurement reliability, and developing WSD standard scores based on a large participant sample with and without aphasia.

Identification of words in whispered speech: The role of cues to fricatives' place and voicing.

The temporal distribution of acoustic cues in whispered speech was analyzed using the gating paradigm. Fifteen Portuguese participants listened to real disyllabic words produced by four Portuguese speakers. Lexical choices, confidence scores, isolation points (IPs), and recognition points (RPs) were analyzed. Mixed effects models predicted that the first syllable and 70% of the total duration of the second syllable were needed for lexical choices to be above chance level. Fricatives' place, not voicing, had a significant effect on the percentage of correctly identified words. IP and RP values of words with postalveolar voiced and voiceless fricatives were significantly different.

Reduced duration of stuttering-like disfluencies and consistent anticipatory slowing during an adaptation task.

The adaptation effect in stuttering, traditionally described as the reduction of stuttering moments over repeated readings, provides a context to investigate fluency facilitation as well as a relatively controlled means of comparing fluent speech in the immediate vicinity of words that were stuttered versus fluently produced. Acoustic studies have documented decreased duration of fluent speech during adaptation but rarely address changes in disfluencies or the speech preceding or following the disfluencies. This study addresses this gap in the research by documenting frequency and duration changes in both fluent and stuttered syllables. Fifteen people who stutter read passages aloud five times in succession. Frequency and duration of fluent syllables, pauses, stuttering-like disfluencies (SLDs) and other disfluencies (ODs) were compared across the five readings. In addition, durations for syllables before and after pauses and SLDs were compared to determine if there were anticipation or carryover effects of SLDs on surrounding syllables. Durations measured for more than 22000 fluent syllables, 1531 pauses, 128 ODs and 1752 SLDs. For most of the 15 participants, significant decreases in both frequency and duration of SLDs over the five readings were observed. In addition, lengthening of fluent syllables immediately preceding the disfluent syllables was observed: this pre-SLD lengthening did not change over the five readings. Decreased duration of SLDs across readings supports the motor practice hypothesis, which assumes that successive reading of the same text increases the efficiency of the speech motor plans resulting in less stuttering and decreased durations of the stuttering that persists. Pre-SLD lengthening merits further study, because it informs our knowledge of the time course of stuttered events and may be associated with conscious or unconscious anticipation of upcoming SLDs that does not decrease with motor practice. What is already known on this subject The frequency of stuttering-like disfluencies (SLDs) can be reduced using a variety of fluency-enhancing strategies. For example, the adaptation effect, in which a reduction of stuttered events occurs over repeated readings of the same material, has been widely studied. Previous studies have shown that durations of fluent syllables decrease during adaptation, supporting the hypothesis that repeated practice of the motor plan leads to increased fluency. However, temporal changes in disfluent syllables and syllables preceding and following SLDs have rarely been studied, so our understanding of the effect of motor practice on stuttering reduction is incomplete. What this study adds This study has two significant findings. First, stuttered disfluencies that persisted after the initial reading of the adaptation task tended to become shorter in duration. Fluently produced syllables and those that were stuttered, both of which are speech events related to motor control of articulators, were affected in a similar manner by the motor practice associated with adaptation. Second, lengthening of fluent syllables immediately preceding stuttered syllables was observed. This pre-stuttering lengthening, however, did not decrease in duration over the five readings: the mechanism that drives this anticipatory behaviour is not affected by repeated practice. What are the clinical implications of this work? People who stutter have neural differences that lead to speech motor planning and/or execution that is less efficient than that of typical speakers. The finding that stuttering is reduced and that persisting SLDs become shorter in duration over repeated readings provides evidence that motor practice can influence the manifestation of stuttering by temporarily making those specific motor plans more efficient. This may inform treatments for stuttering. The observation that fluent syllables immediately before SLDs were lengthened, and that this lengthening was not influenced by repeated practice, extends our understanding of the time course of stuttering events and may be useful in understanding anticipation and listener reactions to stuttering.

Structure and acoustics of the speech of verbal autistic preschoolers.

In this study, we report an extensive investigation of the structural language and acoustical specificities of the spontaneous speech of ten three- to five-year-old verbal autistic children. The autistic children were compared to a group of ten typically developing children matched pairwise on chronological age, nonverbal IQ and socioeconomic status, and groupwise on verbal IQ and gender on various measures of structural language (phonetic inventory, lexical diversity and morpho-syntactic complexity) and a series of acoustical measures of speech (mean and range fundamental frequency, a formant dispersion index, syllable duration, jitter and shimmer). Results showed that, overall, the structure and acoustics of the verbal autistic children's speech were highly similar to those of the TD children. Few remaining atypicalities in the speech of autistic children lay in a restricted use of different vocabulary items, a somewhat diminished morpho-syntactic complexity, and a slightly exaggerated syllable duration.

The automated screening of speech motor development in children based on the sequential motion rate

BackgroundMotor skills in children have traditionally been examined via challenging speech tasks such as syllable repetition, and calculating the syllabic rate using a stopwatch or by inspecting the oscillogram followed by a laborious comparison of the scores on a look-up table representing the typical performances of children of the given age and sex. As the commonly used performance tables are over-simplified to allow for manual scoring, we raise the question of whether a computational model of motor skills development could be more informative, and could allow for the automated screening of children to detect underdeveloped motor skills. MethodsWe recruited a total of 275 children aged four to 15 years. All the participants were native Czech speakers with no history of hearing or neurological impairments. We recorded each child's performance of/pa/-/ta/-/ka/syllable repetition. Various parameters of diadochokinesis (DDK; DDK rate, DDK regularity, voice onset time [VOT] ratio, syllable, vowel and VOT duration) were investigated in the acoustic signals using supervised reference labels. Female and male participants were analyzed separately by comparing younger, middle, and older age groups of children via ANOVA. Finally, we implemented a fully automated model that estimated the developmental age of a child based on the acoustic signal, and evaluated its accuracy using Pearson's correlation coefficient and normalized root-mean-squared errors (RMSEs). ResultsThe DDK rate reflected the ages of the children proportionally (p < 0.001). Other DDK parameters also showed strong sensitivity to age (p < 0.001), with the exception of VOT duration, which had a smaller effect (p = 0.091). The effect of age was found to be sex specific for the syllable length (p < 0.001) and DDK rate (p = 0.003). We observed that females spoke more slowly and had a longer VOT at preschool age (p < 0.001). The DDK rate obtained via the automated algorithm was strongly correlated with the reference (p < 0.001, Pearson's correlation coefficient of 0.97), with a low normalized RMSE of 3.77%. ConclusionsAs children develop their motor skills, they are capable of shortening the vowels to increase the rate of syllabic repetitions. The nonlinear development in childhood and adolescence, with a steady state in adulthood, follows a logistic function for the DDK rate. This study demonstrates that the development of motor skills can be examined sensitively and more appropriately by a fully automated noninvasive procedure that also accounts for the dispersion of values within age brackets.

Perceived rhythmic regularity is greater for song than speech: examining acoustic correlates of rhythmic regularity in speech and song.

Rhythm is a key feature of music and language, but the way rhythm unfolds within each domain differs. Music induces perception of a beat, a regular repeating pulse spaced by roughly equal durations, whereas speech does not have the same isochronous framework. Although rhythmic regularity is a defining feature of music and language, it is difficult to derive acoustic indices of the differences in rhythmic regularity between domains. The current study examined whether participants could provide subjective ratings of rhythmic regularity for acoustically matched (syllable-, tempo-, and contour-matched) and acoustically unmatched (varying in tempo, syllable number, semantics, and contour) exemplars of speech and song. We used subjective ratings to index the presence or absence of an underlying beat and correlated ratings with stimulus features to identify acoustic metrics of regularity. Experiment 1 highlighted that ratings based on the term "rhythmic regularity" did not result in consistent definitions of regularity across participants, with opposite ratings for participants who adopted a beat-based definition (song greater than speech), a normal-prosody definition (speech greater than song), or an unclear definition (no difference). Experiment 2 defined rhythmic regularity as how easy it would be to tap or clap to the utterances. Participants rated song as easier to clap or tap to than speech for both acoustically matched and unmatched datasets. Subjective regularity ratings from Experiment 2 illustrated that stimuli with longer syllable durations and with less spectral flux were rated as more rhythmically regular across domains. Our findings demonstrate that rhythmic regularity distinguishes speech from song and several key acoustic features can be used to predict listeners' perception of rhythmic regularity within and across domains as well.

Machine learning and statistical classification of birdsong link vocal acoustic features with phylogeny

Birdsong is a longstanding model system for studying evolution and biodiversity. Here, we collected and analyzed high quality song recordings from seven species in the family Estrildidae. We measured the acoustic features of syllables and then used dimensionality reduction and machine learning classifiers to identify features that accurately assigned syllables to species. Species differences were captured by the first 3 principal components, corresponding to basic frequency, power distribution, and spectrotemporal features. We then identified the measured features underlying classification accuracy. We found that fundamental frequency, mean frequency, spectral flatness, and syllable duration were the most informative features for species identification. Next, we tested whether specific acoustic features of species’ songs predicted phylogenetic distance. We found significant phylogenetic signal in syllable frequency features, but not in power distribution or spectrotemporal features. Results suggest that frequency features are more constrained by species’ genetics than are other features, and are the best signal features for identifying species from song recordings. The absence of phylogenetic signal in power distribution and spectrotemporal features suggests that these song features are labile, reflecting learning processes and individual recognition.

Multimodal cues to intonational categories: Gesture apex coordination with tonal events

This study argues for a multimodal view of the identification, representation, and implementation of intonational structure, with evidence from gesture apex-tone coordination in Turkish. Many studies have reported consistent synchronisation of atomic prominence markers across modalities (i.e., pitch accents and gesture apexes). This is prima facie evidence that gesture and prosody are implemented together, and therefore the former can play a role in the identification and perception of the latter through apex-tone synchronisation. However, only few studies considered the full intonational context when investigating synchronisation (e.g., potential alignment of apexes with boundary tones). This is particularly relevant for Turkish as there is disagreement in the literature about whether all words in Turkish bear a pitch accent. In this study, we test the synchronisation of apexes with all intonational events in Turkish natural speech data annotated for gesture and prosody, resulting in 820 gesture apex and 3697 tonal event annotations. The study uses syllable duration (160ms) to determine synchronisation between these anchors via equivalence tests while also integrating gestural and prosodic context as factors that can affect the temporal distance between these units through mixed-effects linear regression. The findings showed that apexes were chiefly synchronised with pitch accents (71%), indicating that prominence was the primary constraint for synchronisation. However, analysis of cases with no prosodic prominence provides the first evidence for a hierarchical constraint on synchronisation, since apexes were preferentially synchronised with the tones marking prosodic words (76%) and not with the markers of prosodic constituents higher in the hierarchy. This finding supports the claim that there may be accentless words in Turkish since the absence of prominence caused a systematic shift in the synchronisation behaviour of apexes. More generally, the study shows how multimodal evidence from gesture can be used in the identification of phonological categories, and that prosodic structure is likely to be expressed through multimodal cues as a composite signal.

Speech Rate and Turn-Transition Pause Duration in Dutch and English Spontaneous Question-Answer Sequences

The duration of inter-speaker pauses is a pragmatically salient aspect of conversation that is affected by linguistic and non-linguistic context. Theories of conversational turn-taking imply that, due to listener entrainment to the flow of syllables, a higher speech rate will be associated with shorter turn-transition times (TTT). Previous studies have found conflicting evidence, however, some of which may be due to methodological differences. In order to test the relationship between speech rate and TTT, and how this may be modulated by other dialogue factors, we used question-answer sequences from spontaneous conversational corpora in Dutch and English. As utterance-final lengthening is a local cue to turn endings, we also examined the impact of utterance-final syllable rhyme duration on TTT. Using mixed-effect linear regression models, we observed evidence for a positive relationship between speech rate and TTT: thus, a higher speech rate is associated with longer TTT, contrary to most theoretical predictions. Moreover, for answers following a pause (“gaps”) there was a marginal interaction between speech rate and final rhyme duration, such that relatively long final rhymes are associated with shorter TTT when foregoing speech rate is high. We also found evidence that polar (yes/no) questions are responded to with shorter TTT than open questions, and that direct answers have shorter TTT than responses that do not directly answer the questions. Moreover, the effect of speech rate on TTT was modulated by question type. We found no predictors of the (negative) TTT for answers that overlap with the foregoing questions. Overall, these observations suggest that TTT is governed by multiple dialogue factors, potentially including the salience of utterance-final timing cues. Contrary to some theoretical accounts, there is no strong evidence that higher speech rates are consistently associated with shorter TTT.

Duration Patterns of Chinese Syllables in Commercial and Social Oral Advertisements

Information structure of an utterance is one of the key factors determining phonological unit realization patterns including the duration which is manifested differently in males and females. This article examines the influence of information load and gender on the Chinese syllable duration in commercial and social advertising discourse. The material was taken from the texts of commercial and social oral advertising produced by 6 professional speakers (3 males, 3 females). The measurements were performed in Praat on the syllables with identical phonemics and the same lexical tones occurring both on informative (previously classified as such by a minimum of 6 out of 10 listeners) and uninformative (the remaining) utterance parts. The results show that duration is one of the most important markers of a syllable information load. In both commercial and social advertisements, in over 50 % of cases informative syllables’ duration was longer than that of uninformative ones. The difference was not large but rather consistent. It means that not only duration is involved in manifesting the utterance information structure but other prosodic parameters as well. Another finding was gender difference: 1) on the whole, syllables in female speech have longer duration than in male; 2) males use the duration technique more effectively than females: the contrast between loaded and unloaded syllables is higher

Reliability of a Linguistic Segmentation Procedure Specified by Systemic Functional Linguistics to Examine Extemporaneous Speech.

Extemporaneous speech tasks provide an ecologically valid sample to examine speech acoustics, but differing methodologies exist in the literature for segmentation. Therefore, the purpose of this study was to examine the utility and reliability of a segmentation approach for extemporaneous speech specified by systemic functional linguistics (SFL) and its potential research and clinical applications. Ten speakers without communication disorders served as participants in this study, and they responded to self-selected extemporaneous speaking prompts. Two expert analysts and one clinician analyst utilized a segmentation procedure specified by SFL to segment the extemporaneous speech samples into clauses and clause complexes. Intra- and interrater reliability were calculated for each analyst and pair of analysts. Acoustic measures of duration, speech rate, and intercomplex pause durations were calculated for each clause complex. Analyses for both intra- and interrater reliability revealed high percent agreement that was significantly greater than chance for expert and clinician analysts and between each pair of analysts (p < .001). Acoustic analyses revealed expected variation in number and duration of spoken syllables of clause complexes between and within speakers. The segmentation approach for extemporaneous speech specified by SFL is a reliable method for trained analysts that is informed by lexico-grammar and allows for acoustic measurement of speech production. It is also a reliable method for clinician analysts for speakers without communication disorders, and future work will investigate its utility for speakers with motor speech disorders. https://doi.org/10.23641/asha.22357138.

Tonal context influences tone-duration interaction: Evidence from Cantonese.

Phonetic typological studies suggest that syllable duration is inversely correlated with the accompanying tone's approximate average f0, and tones with dynamic f0 movement tend to be in longer syllables rather than shorter ones. Systematic instrumental investigations on tone-duration interaction remain scant, however; existing studies might be confounded as tonal context may impact duration realization due to phonetic constraints on tonal movement. This study investigates the effect of tonal environment on the durational realization of tones in Cantonese, showing that tone-dependent duration variation is governed by the tonal context. Implications of these findings for existing phonetic typology concerning tone-duration interaction are discussed.

Perceptual normalization for speaking rate occurs below the level of the syllable.

Because speaking rates are highly variable, listeners must use cues like phoneme or sentence duration to normalize speech across different contexts. Scaling speech perception in this way allows listeners to distinguish between temporal contrasts, like voiced and voiceless stops, even at different speech speeds. It has long been assumed that this speaking rate normalization can occur over small units such as phonemes. However, phonemes lack clear boundaries in running speech, so it is not clear that listeners can rely on them for normalization. To evaluate this, we isolate two potential processing levels for speaking rate normalization-syllabic and sub-syllabic-by manipulating phoneme duration in order to cue speaking rate, while also holding syllable duration constant. In doing so, we show that changing the duration of phonemes both with unique spectro-temporal signatures (/kɑ/) and more overlapping spectro-temporal signatures (/wɪ/) results in a speaking rate normalization effect. These results suggest that when acoustic boundaries within syllables are less clear, listeners can normalize for rate differences on the basis of sub-syllabic units.

Identification and Extraction of Features from Malayalam Poems for Analyzing Syllable Duration Patterns

Text-to-speech (TTS) synthesis is an active area of research to generate synthetic speech from the underlying text. Compared to English and many European languages, TTS is yet to mature in Malayalam, the principal language of the South Indian state of Kerala. A syllable has to be uttered with proper durational and prosodic characteristics to emulate natural speech. When it comes to poems in Malayalam, many of them have an inherent rhythm attached to them. In Malayalam, this property is characterized by the Vruta [ 28 ] in which the poem is written. Vruta decides the meter of narration of the poem. Therefore, it is only consequential that Vruta can give away vital cues about the durational and prosodic characteristics of the poem verses recited. This study intends to identify the features that determine the durational characteristics of a poem written in a particular Vruta and develop an algorithm to extract those features required to build a dataset to model the duration of syllable utterances for tuneful TTS in Malayalam. Poems written in three Vrutas, namely Kakali, Manjari, and Keka, are considered in this study. Nineteen extractible features from the orthographic representation of a poem are identified for this purpose. A standard dataset is built using these extracted features. Later, support vector machine and feed forward neural network based estimators are proposed to model the duration of Malayalam poem syllables for tuneful speech synthesis. The hyperparameters are optimized using the GridsearchCV algorithm from the Scikit-learn machine learning library [ 15 ].

A study on the bioacoustics of Oriental scaly crickets (Orthoptera: Mogoplistinae), with a focus on Singaporean species

ABSTRACT The scaly crickets, Mogoplistinae, form a monophyletic group of crickets and are characterised by scales covering the integument. In many species, males have modified forewings for producing highly tonal calling songs. Despite being a highly speciose and abundant group of orthopterans in tropical forests, data on their calling songs and studies on their bioacoustics remain scanty. In this study, we recorded and described the calling songs of seven sympatric scaly cricket species belonging to three genera—Cycloptiloides, Ectatoderus and Ornebius—from Singapore. We compared call structure and call parameters of syntopic species occurring together in the same locality within Singapore and found that syntopic congeners exhibit acoustic partitioning to avoid inter-specific competition for the acoustic space. We also found that calling songs can be highly varied among congeners and species from the same species groups. Finally, we also observed that syllable duration and peak frequency exhibit vastly different allometric relationships with body size. Larger scaly cricket species bear disproportionately longer syllable duration, but not differences in peak frequency.