Rise In Fundamental Frequency Research Articles

Expanding research on ʔayʔaǰuθəm interrogative intonation

Relatively little research has been done on ʔayʔaǰuθəm prosody. This lack of research is due in part to the idea that stress and tone are not distinctive features in the language. However, recent studies have found evidence of suprasegmental features in ʔayʔaǰuθəm interrogatives. Additionally, previous work indicates that—as has been reported with other Salishan languages—there is no significant rise in fundamental frequency at the end of ʔayʔaǰuθəm interrogatives, though the mean vowel fundamental frequency is higher in interrogative than in declarative sentences. These findings are not unique to ʔayʔaǰuθəm, but they do contribute to growing evidence that a final rise in fundamental frequency in interrogative sentences is not universal. In the present study, we aim to address the limitations of our previous work by expanding on the amount of data used, incorporating methods for analyzing the entire fundamental frequency contour, and measuring the mean fundamental frequency of vowels from more balanced stimuli. Although we do not expect different results from the present study, it is our hope that the methodologies used will increase the validity of our findings on ʔayʔaǰuθəm interrogative intonation.

Modeling the influence of the extrinsic musculature on phonation.

Neck muscles play important roles in various physiological tasks, including swallowing, head stabilization, and phonation. The mechanisms by which neck muscles influence phonation are not well understood, with conflicting reports on the change in fundamental frequency for ostensibly the same neck muscle activation scenarios. In this work, we introduce a reduced-order muscle-controlled vocal fold model, comprising both intrinsic muscle control and extrinsic muscle effects. The model predicts that when the neck muscles pull the thyroid cartilage in the superior-anterior direction (with a sufficiently large anterior component), inferior direction, or inferior-anterior direction, tension in the vocal folds increases, leading to fundamental frequency rise during sustained phonation. On the other hand, pulling in the superior direction, superior-posterior direction, or inferior-posterior direction (with a sufficiently large posterior component) tends to decrease vocal fold tension and phonation fundamental frequency. Varying the pulling force location alters the posture and phonation biomechanics, depending on the force direction. These findings suggest potential roles of particular neck muscles in modulating phonation fundamental frequency, with implications for vocal hyperfunction.

The Language-specific Use of Fundamental Frequency Rise in Segmentation of an Artificial Language: Evidence from Listeners of Taiwanese Southern Min.

Experience with native-language prosody encourages language-specific strategies for speech segmentation. Conflicting findings from previous research suggest that these strategies may not be abstracted away from the acoustic manifestation of prosodic features in the native speech. Using the artificial language learning paradigm, the current study explores this possibility in connection with listeners of a lexical tone language called Taiwanese Southern Min (TSM). In TSM, the only rising lexical tone occurs almost only on the final syllable of the language's tone sandhi domain and is phonetically associated with final lengthening. Based on these observations, Experiment I examined what constituted a sufficient finality cue for use by TSM listeners to support segmentation: (a) final fundamental frequency (F0) rise only; or (b) final F0 rise conjoined with final lengthening. The results showed that segmentation was inhibited by the former cue but facilitated by the latter. Experiment II showed that the facilitation cannot be attributed entirely to final lengthening, as a null effect was found when final lengthening was the sole prosodic cue to segmentation. It is thus assumed that acoustic details as fine-grained as the lengthening of the rising tone are involved in the modulation of the segmentation strategy whereby TSM listeners perceive F0 rise as signaling finality. The inhibitory effect of final F0 rise alone found in Experiment I motivated Experiment III, which revealed that initial F0 rise in the absence of lengthening cues improved TSM listeners' segmentation. It is speculated that such use of initial F0 rise might reflect a cross-linguistic segmentation solution.

The Production of Question Intonation by Young Adult Cochlear Implant Users: Does Age at Implantation Matter?

Purpose The purpose of this observational study was to investigate the properties of sentence-final prosody in yes/no questions produced by cochlear implant (CI) users in order to determine whether and how the age at CI implantation impacts CI users' production of question intonation later in life. Method We acoustically analyzed recordings from 46 young adult CI users and 10 young adults with normal hearing who read yes/no questions. Of the 46 CI users, 20 had received their CI before the age of 4.0 years (early implantation group), 15 between ages 4.0 and 8.11 years (midimplantation group), and 11 at the age of 9.0 years or later (late implantation group). We assessed the prosodic properties of the produced questions for each implantation group and the normal hearing comparison group (a) by measuring the sentence-final rise in fundamental frequency, (b) by labeling the question-final intonation contour using the Tones and Breaks Index ( Beckman & Ayers, 1994 ; Silverman, Beckman, et al., 1992 ; Veilleux, Shattuck-Hufnagel, & Brugos, 2006 ), and (c) by assessing phrase-final lengthening. Results The fundamental frequency rises produced by all CI users exhibited a smaller magnitude than those produced by the normal hearing comparison group, although the difference between early implanted CI users and the normal hearing group did not reach statistical significance. Early implanted CI users were more comparable in their use of question-final intonation contours to the individuals with typical hearing than to those users with CI implanted later in life. All CI users exhibited significantly less phrase-final lengthening than the normal hearing comparison group, regardless of age at CI implantation. Conclusion The results of this investigation of question intonation produced by CI users suggest that those CI users who were implanted with CI earlier in life produce yes/no question intonation in a manner that is more similar to, albeit not the same as, individuals with normal hearing when compared to the productions of those users with CI implanted after 4.0 years of age.

Neural control of rising and falling tones in Mandarin speakers who stutter

Neural control of rising and falling tones in Mandarin people who stutter (PWS) was examined by comparing with that which occurs in fluent speakers [Howell, Jiang, Peng, and Lu (2012). Neural control of fundamental frequency rise and fall in Mandarin tones. Brain and Language, 121(1), 35–46]. Nine PWS and nine controls were scanned. Functional connectivity analysis showed that the connections between the insula and LMC and between the LMC and the putamen differed significantly between PWS and fluent speakers during both rising and falling tones. The connection between the insula and the brainstem differed between PWS and fluent speakers only during the falling tone. These results indicated the neural control for the rising tone and the falling tone are affected in PWS. Moreover, whilst both rising and falling tones were affected in PWS, falling-tone control appeared to be affected more.

Neural control of fundamental frequency rise and fall in Mandarin tones

The neural mechanisms used in tone rises and falls in Mandarin were investigated. Nine participants were scanned while they named one-character pictures that required rising or falling tone responses in Mandarin: the left insula and right putamen showed stronger activation between rising and falling tones; the left brainstem showed weaker activation between rising and falling tones. Connectivity analysis showed that the significant projection from the laryngeal motor cortex to the brainstem which was present in rising tones was absent in falling tones. Additionally, there was a significant difference between the connection from the insula to the laryngeal motor cortex which was negative in rising tones but positive in falling tones. These results suggest that the significant projection from the laryngeal motor cortex to the brainstem used in rising tones was not active in falling tones. The connection from the left insula to the laryngeal motor cortex that differs between rising and falling tones may control whether the rise mechanism is active or not.

The relationship between testosterone and vocal frequencies in human males

We investigated relationships between circulating levels of salivary testosterone and the fundamental and formant frequencies of male voices in a sample of forty healthy adult males, who recorded their voices and provided saliva samples at 9 am, 12 noon and 3 pm on a single day. The relationship between 2D:4D ratio as a putative biomarker of prenatal testosterone and vocal parameters was also explored. Results supported previous findings for a negative relationship between circulating levels of testosterone and fundamental frequency, with higher testosterone indicating lower fundamental frequency, although the magnitude of the relationship was larger than previously observed. Some limited evidence for a relationship between circulating testosterone and formant dispersion is also found, although this did not reach significance. Diurnal variation in testosterone and fundamental frequency, but not formant dispersion was reported, together with a trend towards an association between the fall in testosterone and the rise in fundamental frequency. Finally, there was no relationship between 2D:4D and the vocal parameters. It is thought that male voices may have deepened over the course of evolution in order to signal dominance and/or to increase the speaker's attractiveness. Findings confirm that vocal frequencies may provide an honest signal of the speaker's hormonal quality.

Metallic Voice: Physiological and Acoustic Features

The metallic voice is usually confused with ring or nasality by singers and nontrained listeners, who are not used to perceptual vocal analysis. They believe a metallic voice results from a rise in fundamental frequency. A diagnostic error in this aspect may lead to lowering pitch, an incorrect procedure that could cause vocal overload and fatigue. The purpose of this article is to study the quality of metallic voice considering the correlation between information of the physiological and acoustic plans, based on a perceptive consensual assumption. Fiberscopic video pharyngolaryngoscopy was performed on 21 professional singers while speaking vowel [e]--in normal and metallic modes to observe muscular movements and structural changes of the velopharynx, pharynx, and larynx. Vocal samples captured simultaneously to the fiberscopic examination were acoustically analyzed. Frequency and amplitude of the first four formants (F(1), F(2), F(3), and F(4)) were extracted by means of linear predictor coefficients (LPC) spectrum and were statistically analyzed. Vocal tract adjustments such as velar lowering, pharyngeal wall narrowing, laryngeal rise, aryepiglottic, and lateral laryngeal constrictions were frequently found; there were no significant changes in frequency and amplitude of F(1) in the metallic voice; there were significant increases in amplitudes of F(2), F(3), and F(4) and in frequency for F(2); metallic voice perceived as louder was correlated to an increase in amplitude of F(3) and F(4). Physiological adjustments of velopharynx, pharynx, and larynx are combined in characterizing the metallic voice and can be acoustically related to changes in formant pattern.

Effect of dental prosthesis on the voice

It is well known that alterations to the oral cavity caused by dental prostheses may affect speech articulation, although influences on the voice are not assumed. In addition to the vocal fundamental frequency, vibrations of the vocal chords generate overtones. Through the shape of the larynx and the upper airway, resonances and antiresonances are formed, and in this way overtones are amplified to a variable extent. Nozzle changes caused by a dental prosthesis in the oral cavity may possibly influence overtones but influences on the vocal fundamental frequency seem unlikely. The influence of dental prostheses on the voice is demonstrated in a patient who owned two different dental prostheses. The fundamental frequency rose by up to five semitones during speech and his vocal range increased by up to four semitones when a thin denture was used instead of a normal denture. When the position of the mandible was checked by intraoral needle point placement, a more rostral position of the mandible was recorded with the thin denture than with the normal denture. Sagittal magnetic resonance tomography imaging also showed that the larynx was in a more cranial position. This change was presumed to be due to an upward movement of the larynx induced by the tongue, which itself was found to be in a more cranial position with the thin denture. In this situation, increased tension of the laryngeal muscles were believed to induce a rise in fundamental frequency, shifting the voice range toward higher frequencies. These findings show that dental prostheses can cause vocal changes in individual cases. The etiology of this occurrence is still not clear. Its consequences, however, should be known to the dentist, ENT surgeon and phoniatrist if patients notice changes in their voice after having altered or replaced their dentures.

On the relation between subglottal pressure and fundamental frequency in phonation.

The change in fundamental frequency with subglottal pressure in phonation is quantified on the basis of the ratio between vibrational amplitude and vocal fold length. This ratio is typically very small in stringed instruments, but becomes quite appreciable in vocal fold vibration. Tension in vocal fold tissues is, therefore, not constant over the vibratory cycle, and a dynamic tension gives rise to amplitude-frequency dependence. It is shown that the typical 2-6 Hz/cm H2O rise in fundamental frequency with subglottal pressure observed in human and canine larynges is a direct and predictable consequence of this amplitude-frequency dependence. Results are presently limited to phonation in the chest register.

The effect of communications medium on the fundamental frequency of speech

Interactions between two pairs of subjects were conducted face‐to‐face and over a two‐way closed‐circuit television medium and were tape recorded. The speech for each subject over each medium was edited to remove silent intervals and the resulting edited speech segments, each about 1 minute in duration, were analyzed by a computer implementation of the cepstrum method of fundamental‐frequency determination. The speech of all four subjects showed a statistically significant rise in fundamental frequency ranging from 3.89% to 7.83% for the closed‐circuit television condition relative to the face‐to‐face condition. This result could imply that two‐way closed‐circuit television is a more tense or stressful medium than face‐to‐face communication. Alternatively, the effect could be explained by such other factors as a rise in speech level caused by a greater perceived distance between the participants in the closed‐circuit television condition.

On the perception of contour tones

In certain Chinese dialects (e,g., Taiwanese and Shanghai), contour tones are frequently associated with increased vowel length relative to that of level tones. An experimental study explored the extent to which increases in the duration of the vocalic portion immediately preceding a terminal rise in fundamental frequency affects the subjective estimation of the degree of excursion and slope of the tonal contour. Toward this end, six synthetically generated variants of the vowel [i] were rated on their degree of “contourness”—defined as the amount of pitch change occurring over the final portion of the vowel. In each stimulus, the fundamental frequency of this terminal portion ascended linearly from 100 to 150 Hz over a 90-msec interval. Preceding the contour were vocalic segments of variable duration (0–160 msec) but of uniformly steady fundamental frequency (100 Hz). Preliminary results indicate a positive correlation between the length of the initial segment and the perceived degree of “contourness” associated with the terminal rise. [Research supported by NSF.]

Voice fundamental frequency in saturation diving

Divers under hyperbaric conditions experience a marked deterioration in speech intelligibility. Included among the possible features that contribute to speech degradation is speaking fundamental frequency (SFF). Based on the physics of the environment and the physiology of the diver, it would not be expected that SFF would vary due to HeO2/P conditions. However, in an earlier pilot study, increase in SFF was found. In order to test the cited hypothesis as well as expand the previous limited findings, a large group of U. S. Navy divers were studied. The diver/subjects produced speech at the surface and at depths of 200, 450, and 600 ft in helium-rich environments. Of the original pool of 46 divers, 28 were studied at 200 ft, 22 at 450 and 9 at 600 ft. The speech material used was the first paragraph of the Rainbow Passage; SFF was obtained by processing this passage by FFI-6. The raw data revealed a significant rise in fundamental frequency to 450 ft and a subsequent decrease at 600 ft, but subsequent analysis (based on the divers' SFF at the surface) showed an almost linear increase in SFF with increases in helium concentrate and ambient pressure. These results are discussed; it is believed that divers' attempts to speak “more intelligibly” (rather than the HeO2 environment) were the cause of this shift. [Work supported by ONR.]

The intonation of wh-questions in Franco-Ontarian

The melodic structure of an interrogative utterance frequently depends on the grammatical structure of the sentence in question. In addition to the enunciative sentence of the kindvous venez?which bears a particular acoustic mark of interrogation, a rise in fundamental frequency in sentence-final position, there exist also interrogative utterances signalled by inversion of word order and still others marked by lexical means, the WH-questions. It is the intonation of this latter type of sentence which we intend to examine in the Canadian-French spoken in Ontario.The intonation of interrogative sentences has for some years been the object of important research in different languages. Wells (1945) and Trager and Smith (1951) note in English an intonation curve at the following levels: 2 - 3 - 1 - without any tonal prominence on the interrogative word. Armstrong and Ward (1926), Jones (1932) and Faure (1948) also find that this type of interrogative sentence has a descending intonation. Fries (1964) finds no specific intonation pattern in a spontaneous corpus from which he studiedyes-noquestions. For German, Von Essen (1956) notes two intonation patterns: one rising (question intonation) and one falling (interrogative intonation).

Coarticulation Effects on Pitch

The effects of vowels and consonants on the fundamental frequency of syllables were explored by examining spectrograms of consonant-vowel (C-V) and V-C utterances spoken in isolation. Comparisons of the differences in average fundamental frequencies for these syllables revealed relatively little evidence of consonantal influence on the average fundamental frequencies of adjacent vowels. However, by comparing the degree and amount of rise in fundamental frequency (i.e., pitch contours) in syllable initial and final positions, certain interesting phenomena were observed. In general, syllables that begin with voiceless consonants have a pitch contour characterized by a higher initial Fo than their voiced counterparts and are followed by a sharper fall; syllables with voiceless consonants in final position have a characteristically sudden drop in the pitch contour. An explanation for these facts is offered in terms of changes in transglottal air-pressure drop as a result of variations in supraglottal vocal tract configuration as well as timing of laryngeal muscle gestures relative to consonant closure. It is felt that these predictable mechanical effects are among the variables that should be taken into account when analyzing the role of intonation in speech.