This study is a formant-based investigation of the vowels of male speakers in 13 accents of the British Isles. It provides F1/F2 graphs (obtained with a semi-automatic method) which could be used as starting points for more thorough analyses. The article focuses on both phonetic realization and systemic phenomena, and it also provides detailed information on automatic formant measurements. The ...

This paper introduces a model being developed for estimating child and adolescent formant frequency values from adult data. The model approximates adult male and female pharyngeal and oral cavity lengths, and scales these along the corresponding male or female growth curve. The second and third formant frequencies are estimated directly from these scaled vocal tract dimensions. Two methods of e...

Two speech feature sets, RMS rhythmicity and formant frequencies F1-F4, are analyzed for their ability to distinguish alcoholized from sober speech. We describe the statistical framework based on the Alcohol Language Corpus (ALC), including other factors such as gender, age and speaking style, and its application to our case. Rhythm features are calculated using a new method based solely on the...

Cognitive load measurement systems measure the mental demand experienced by human while performing a cognitive task, which is useful in monitoring and enhancing task performance. Various speech-based systems have been proposed for cognitive load classification, but the effect of cognitive load on the speech production system is still not well understood. In this work, we study formant frequenci...

This paper describes our work on building a formant synthesis system based on both rule generated and database driven methods. Three parametric synthesis systems are discussed: our traditional rule based system, a speaker adapted system, and finally a gesture system. The gesture system is a further development of the adapted system in that it includes concatenated formant gestures from a data-d...

The cognitive load experienced by a person can be used as an index to monitor task performance. Hence, the ability to measure the cognitive load of a person using speech can potentially be very useful, especially in areas such as air traffic control systems. Current research on cognitive load does not provide enough insight into how cognitive load affects the speech spectrum, or the speech prod...

Research indicates that, when the first and second formants of a vowel are separated by less than about 3.5 Bark, perception of its height and some other aspects of its quality is determined by some weighted average of the low-frequency spectrum, rather than by particular harmonic or hypothetical formant frequencies (as is the case with more widely spaced formants). This spectral averaging has ...