Fundamental Frequency Curve Research Articles

English Prosodic Focus Marking by Cantonese Trilingual Children With and Without Autism Spectrum Disorder.

The current study investigated English prosodic focus marking by autistic and typically developing (TD) Cantonese trilingual children, and examined the potential differences in this regard compared to native English-speaking children. Forty-eight participants were recruited with 16 speakers for each of the three groups (Cantonese-speaking autistic [CASD], Cantonese-speaking TD [CTD], and English-speaking TD [ETD] children), and prompt questions were designed to elicit desired focus type (i.e., broad, narrow, and contrastive focus). Mean duration, mean fundamental frequency (F0), F0 range, mean intensity, and F0 curves were used as the acoustic correlates for linear mixed-effects model fitting and functional data analyses in relation to groups and focus conditions (i.e., broad, narrow, and contrastive pre-, on-, and post-focus). The CTD group had post-focus compression (PFC) patterns via reducing mean duration, narrowing F0 range, and lowering mean F0, F0 curve, and mean intensity for words under both narrow and contrastive post-focus conditions, while the CASD group only had shortened mean duration and lowered F0 curves. However, neither the CTD group nor CASD group showed much of on-focus expansion (OFE) patterns. The ETD group marked OFE by increasing mean duration, mean F0, mean intensity, and higher F0 curve for words under on-focus conditions. The CTD group utilized more acoustic cues than the CASD group when it comes to PFC. The ETD group differed from the CASD and CTD groups in the use of OFE. Furthermore, both the CASD and CTD groups showed positive first language transfer in the use of duration and intensity and, potentially, successful acquisition in the use of F0 for prosodic focus marking. Meanwhile, the differences in the use of OFE between the Cantonese-speaking and English-speaking groups, not PFC, might indicate that Cantonese-speaking children acquire PFC prior to OFE.

A Deep Learning Based Method for Parkinson’s Disease Detection Using Dynamic Features of Speech

Detection of voice changes in Parkinson’s Disease (PD) patients would make it possible for early detection and intervention before the onset of disabling physical symptoms. This study explores static and dynamic speech features relating to PD detection. A comparative analysis of the articulation transition characteristics shows that the number of articulation transitions and the trend of the fundamental frequency curve are significantly different between HC speakers and PD patients. Motivated by this observation, we propose to apply Bidirectional long-short term memory (LSTM) model to capture time-series dynamic features of a speech signal for detecting PD. The dynamic speech features are measured based on computing the energy content in the transition from unvoiced to voiced segments (onset), and in the transition from voiced to unvoiced segments (offset). Under the two evaluation methods of 10-fold cross validation (CV) and splitting the dataset without samples overlap of one individual, the experimental results show that the proposed method remarkably improves the accuracy of PD detection over traditional machine learning models using static features.

Motor Bearing Fault Diagnosis Based on Frequency Conversion Estimation and Order Analysis

Order analysis (OA) has been proven to be an effective tool for motor bearing fault diagnosis under variable-speed conditions, but it is a challenge to perform OA when a tachometer is unavailable to obtain the rotating speed. In this study, a new angular resampling method based on instantaneous frequency estimation of the transient current signal is proposed for bearing fault diagnosis with speed fluctuation. First, the fundamental rotating frequency curve is extracted from the acquired phase current signal of a brushless direct current motor (BLDCM). The mechanical rotating angle curve is then calculated by integrating the fundamental frequency curve. The synchronous sampled vibration signal of the fault bearing is resampled in the angular domain according to the obtained rotating phase information. The effectiveness and efficiency of the proposed method are verified through a BLDCM experimental setup.

Predicting glottal closure insufficiency using fundamental frequency contour analysis

Voice analysis has a limited role in a day-to-day voice clinic. We developed objective measurements of vocal folds (VF) glottal closure insufficiency (GCI) during phonation. We examined 18 subjects with no history of voice impairment and 20 patients with unilateral VF paralysis before and after injection medialization laryngoplasty. Voice analysis was extracted. We measured settling time, slope, and area under the fundamental frequency curve from the phonation onset to its settling-time. The measured parameters, settling time, slope, and area under the curve were in correlation with the traditional acoustic voice assessments and clinical findings before treatment and after injection medialization laryngoplasty. We found that the fundamental frequency curve has several typical contours which correspond to different glottal closure conditions. We proposed a new set of parameters that captures the contour type, and showed that they could be used to quantitatively assess individuals with GCI.

Geometrically nonlinear dynamic response of eccentrically stiffened circular cylindrical shells with negative poisson's ratio in auxetic honeycombs core layer

Present research aims to analyse the nonlinear dynamic behavior of eccentrically stiffened (ES) circular cylindrical shells with negative Poisson's ratios in auxetic honeycombs core layer on elastic foundations and subjected to blast and mechanical loads. This study considers a three – layer circular cylindrical shells in which the core layer is the auxetic material with negative Poisson's ratio, and the external layers are reinforced by a system of stiffeners. Based on the analytical solution, Reddy's first order shear deformation theory with the geometrical nonlinear in von Karman and Airy stress functions method, Galerkin method and the fourth-order Runge–Kutta method, out explicit expressions can be determined: fundamental frequency, dynamic response and frequency-amplitude curves. Numerical results are provided to explore the effects of geometrical parameters, material properties, elastic foundations, imperfections, eccentrically stiffeners, mechanical and blast loads on the nonlinear dynamic behavior: fundamental frequency, dynamic response and frequency-amplitude curves.

Modulation of Relative Fundamental Frequency During Transient Emotional States

Relative fundamental frequency, a measure of the muscular and aerodynamic influences of voicing offset and onset of vowel-voiceless consonant-vowel production, has been known to reflect conditions of vocal hyperfunction and serves as a measure that might be influenced by transient emotional states. Twenty-six vocally healthy females underwent aversive, neutral, and positive emotional induction while saying /afa/. Results show that individuals had a steeper fundamental frequency decline on the 10 cycles of offset of vocalization during positive and neutral conditions than aversive conditions. Individuals had an overall elevated fundamental frequency curve during the 10 cycles of vocalization onset in positive conditions. Findings suggest that the vocal offset reflected reduced muscular engagement in positive and neutral conditions compared with aversive conditions, suggesting that aversive emotional influence on voicing has a muscular component.

Feature Optimization of Speech Emotion Recognition

Speech emotion is divided into four categories, Fear, Happy, Neutral and Surprise in this paper. Traditional features and their statistics are generally applied to recognize speech emotion. In order to quantify each feature’s contribution to emotion recogni-tion, a method based on the Back Propagation (BP) neural network is adopted. Then we can obtain the optimal subset of the features. What’s more, two new characteristics of speech emotion, MFCC feature extracted from the fundamental frequency curve (MFCCF0) and amplitude perturbation parameters extracted from the short- time av-erage magnitude curve (APSAM), are added to the selected features. With the Gaus-sian Mixture Model (GMM), we get the highest average recognition rate of the four emotions 82.25%, and the recognition rate of Neutral 90%.

Study on seismic disaster mechanism of irregular C-shaped curved bridge with high piers

Based on multi-support excitation theory, an irregular C-shaped curved bridge model with high piers was made by taking scale proportion of 1:20 to conduct the seismic simulation shaking table test in this paper. Failure mode of high flexible piers and earthquake damage mechanism of the curved bridge with high piers in action of different seismic wave spectrum, different peak acceleration, and different local topography effect were studied. The results showed that the failure mode of high flexible pier presents obvious distributional flexible characteristics, #1 pier's cracks concentrated in range of 0.125L–0.46L (L is the height of the piers) from the bottom of the pier, while #2 and #3 pier's cracks concentrated in range of 0.07L–0.625L from the bottom of the piers. Pier elevation difference significantly affected pier cracks development and bridges dynamic response. Accompanied with increase of load, the fundamental frequency curve presented decline in leveling off, while the damping increased gradually and the capacity of seismic energy dissipation of the structure enhanced. Dynamic responses of the curved bridge are different and presented different law when four different seismic waves were applied. When seismic loads increased from 120 gal to 360 gal, peak dynamic response basically presented linear growth. When seismic loads increased from 480 gal to 960 gal, considering the local topography effect, peak dynamic response significantly presented nonlinear growth. In action of seismic load of 960 gal, the displacements at the top of the #1 and #3 piers were up to 32.3 mm, showing that the seismic response was relatively large at head and tail section of bridge thus prone to cause beam dropping down.

Novel Applications of Neural Networks in Speech Technology Systems: Search Space Reduction and Prosodic Modeling

Abstract Neural networks (NNs) have been extensively used in speech technology systems. In this paper, we present two novel applications of NNs in speech recognition and text-to-speech systems. The prosodic modeling is one of the most important tasks for developing a new text-tospeech synthesizer, especially in a female-voice high-quality restricted-domain system. Our double objective is to get accurate predictors for both the fundamental frequency (FO) curve and phoneme duration by minimizing the model estimation error in a Spanish text-to-speech system, by means of a neural network estimator, which has proved to be an excellent tool for the modeling. The resulting system predicts prosody with very good results (for duration: 15.5 ms in RMS and a correlation factor of 0.8975; for F0: 19.80 Hz in RMS and a relative RMS error of 0.43) that clearly improves our previous rule-based system.

The Activity of the Cricothyroid Muscle and the Intrinsic Fundamental Frequency in Danish Vowels

The relationship between the electromyographic (EMG) activity from the pars obliqua of the cricothyroid (CT) muscle (recorded with bipolar hook-wire electrodes) and the intrinsic fundamental frequency (IF0) in high and low vowels in Danish was investigated. The test material, which consisted of 306 randomized natural words of the type C'V(:)le, imbedded in carrier sentences, was recorded by 4 native speakers of Danish. The following vowel pairs were compared: ['i-'a,'i:-'ae:, 'u:-'ae:] and ['i:-'a]. The results, which are based on visual inspection of average EMG and fundamental frequency (F0) curves, show a positive correlation between the CT activity and IF0, more specifically that the CT activity rise related to the high vowels starts earlier and in most cases more steeply than the CT activity related to the low vowels. However, a drop in F0 at the beginning of the low vowels cannot be accounted for by CT activity. This F0 drop is believed to be the result of either tongue retraction during the articulation or influence from the preceding consonant. The following conclusion is drawn: The CT muscle is a major factor in controlling IF0 in stressed high and low vowels in Danish.

Early diagnosis of CNS disturbance from computer analysis of infant cries: A new method of fundamental frequency jitter computation with high resolution in frequency and time

A method and a computer program are given to measure the jitter of the fundamental frequency of infants’ cries. The jitter curve depends on the of slope of the fundamental frequency curve and it also shows differences between hunger, pain and frustration cries. For an objective evaluation of jitter abnormities, a parameter — the so‐called cry‐jitter index — is used. Statistical analyses showed significant differences in the cry‐jitter indexes of normal versus premature infants.

Microcomputer-aided studies of cry jitter uttered by newborn children based upon high-resolution analysis of fundamental frequencies

The metrological and computational problems of detecting very weak variations in the frequencies of the fundamental tone are discussed from a signal processing point of view. An appropriate computer method of high-resolution analysis of the fundamental frequency is proposed. When applying high-resolution fundamental frequency analysis to cry signals, a jitter was found to exist in the fundamental frequency curve of both healthy babies and those suffering form cerebral disorders.A method is given to separate the jitter from the fundamental frequency curve. The separated jitter curve depends on the degree of slope of the fundamental frequency curve and shows differences between healthy and ill babies.For an objective evaluation of the jitter abnormities, an integral parameter — the so-called cry-jitter index — is proposed

Pitch dynamism in bilingual females and males

Pitch dynamism refers to how rapid or slow are changes in pitch range from high points to low points, and vice versa. Previous studies of pitch have focused largely on average pitch. Dynamism has been little explored instrumentally, and scarcely at all with regard to the variable speaker sex. Using recordings of female and male bilingual speakers, dynamism will be measured on the basis of first-differentiated fundamental frequency curves. These data will be used to explore whether there are intersex differences in pitch dynamism, and whether there is variation according to language spoken. Findings will be related to previously reported results for pitch ranges by females and males. Taking the combined results, it will be possible to respond empirically to stereotypes existing for more excitable or more variable speech for female speech, a response that has been urged by, e.g., Kramer (1977), McConnell-Ginet (1983), and Smith (1985).

Classification of Basic Fundamental Frequency Patterns Using Discriminant Functions

An attempt was made to see whether realizations of eight different pitch patterns can be classified automatically by subjecting fundamental frequency curves to statistical treatment using two kinds of discriminant functions. The materials consisted of 150 imitations of each of the eight prototypes (eight intonations of a short Polish phrase). Approximately 80% of the time the statistical procedures assigned the individual tokens to the appropriate classes. Most of the misassignments were due to wrong imitations. The discriminant functions also indicated similarities and dissimilarities among the pitch patterns. It is suggested that perceptually and linguistically, some differences between pitch patterns may not be quite categorical.

Testing a model of intonation in a tone language.

Schematic fundamental frequency curves of simple statements and questions are generated for Hausa, a two-tone language of Nigeria, using a modified version of an intonational model developed by Gårding and Bruce [Nordic Prosody II, edited by T. Fretheim (Tapir, Trondheim, 1981), pp. 33-39]. In this model, rules for intonation and tones are separated. Intonation is represented as sloping grids of (near) parallel lines, inside which tones are placed. The tones are associated with turning points of the fundamental frequency contour. Local rules may also modify the exact placement of a tone within the grid. The continuous fundamental frequency contour is modeled by concatenating the tonal points using polynomial equations. Thus the final pitch contour is modeled as an interaction between global and local factors. The slope of the intonational grid lines depends at least on sentence type (statement or question), sentence length, and tone pattern. The model is tested by reference to data from nine speakers of Kano Hausa.

Torsional wave propagation in an infinite piezoelectric cylinder (622) crystal class

Torsional wave motion in an infinite right circular hollow piezoelectric cylinder belonging to (622) crystal class is investigated when the cylindrical surfaces are either traction-free or subjected to relative displacement. Open and short-circuit resonant frequency equations are formulated. Fundamental resonant frequency curves are given for traction-free cylinders. The theory is applied to the vibrations of annular accelerometers.

Integrating different levels of intonation analysis

This paper deals with a partly experimental approach to the complex relationship that exists between the abstract, global structures of intonation, and the concrete, atomistic features of the course of the fundamental frequency. More specifically, we have introduced three levels of description and have attempted to establish links between these: a concrete and atomistic level of the perceptually relevant pitch movements, a concrete and global level of the audible pitch contours and the measurable fundamental frequency curves, and finally, an abstract and global level of the intonation patterns. In the corresponding three main parts of the paper it will be shown (1) how pitch movements can perceptually segment the fundamental frequency continuum; (2) how a “grammar” can be designed that is capable of generating all and only the acceptable combinations of pitch movements, i.e. pitch contours; (3) how listeners categorize different pitch contours into meaningful classes, i.e. intonation patterns. The investigation was based on Dutch utterances.

Radial vibrations of axially polarized piezoelectric ceramic cylinders

This paper is concerned with the steady−state radial−shear vibrations of an axially polarized piezoelectric ceramic tube of infinite length, whose cylindrical surfaces are either traction−free or subjected to a relative displacement. Open− and short−circuit resonant frequency equations are formulated and the deviation between frequency pairs examined numerically. Fundamental resonant frequency curves are given for traction−free PZT−4 cylinders having arbitrary geometry, which approach the infinite plate solutions for large radius/thickness ratios. The theory is applied to the vibrations of annular accelerometers operating in the radial−shear mode. Subject Classification: 40.26.