Intra- and inter-speaker variations of formant pattern for lateral syllables in Standard Chinese
Author
Summary, in English
Speech variation of speakers is a crucial issue for speaker recognition and identification, especially for forensic practice.
Greater intra-speaker variation is one main reason for incorrect speaker identification in real forensic situations. Understanding
the stability of acoustic parameters and their variation in speech is therefore significant for the evaluation of effective parameters
for speaker identification. In this paper, all vowels in Standard Chinese including five monophthongs, eight diphthongs and four
triphthongs were combined with lateral /l/. Finally, 15 lateral syllables with different tones for 10 speakers were selected and
acoustically analyzed. Central frequencies of the first four formants for each syllable were measured for quantitative comparison
of intra- and inter-speaker variation in order to provide a general idea of speaker variation in Standard Chinese, and finally
serving for forensic application. Results show that the overall intra-speaker variation is less than the inter-speaker variation in
great extent under laboratory condition though occasionally they are contrary. This supports the basis for forensic speaker
identification, that is, intra-speaker variation should be less than inter-speaker variation in many acoustic features, and further
validates the probability and reliability of forensic speaker identification.
Greater intra-speaker variation is one main reason for incorrect speaker identification in real forensic situations. Understanding
the stability of acoustic parameters and their variation in speech is therefore significant for the evaluation of effective parameters
for speaker identification. In this paper, all vowels in Standard Chinese including five monophthongs, eight diphthongs and four
triphthongs were combined with lateral /l/. Finally, 15 lateral syllables with different tones for 10 speakers were selected and
acoustically analyzed. Central frequencies of the first four formants for each syllable were measured for quantitative comparison
of intra- and inter-speaker variation in order to provide a general idea of speaker variation in Standard Chinese, and finally
serving for forensic application. Results show that the overall intra-speaker variation is less than the inter-speaker variation in
great extent under laboratory condition though occasionally they are contrary. This supports the basis for forensic speaker
identification, that is, intra-speaker variation should be less than inter-speaker variation in many acoustic features, and further
validates the probability and reliability of forensic speaker identification.
Department/s
Publishing year
2006
Language
English
Pages
117-124
Publication/Series
Forensic Science International
Volume
158
Issue
2-3
Links
Document type
Journal article
Publisher
Elsevier
Topic
- Forensic Science
Keywords
- forensic phonetics
- formant patterns
Status
Published
ISBN/ISSN/Other
- ISSN: 1872-6283