Browsing by Person "Docherty, Gerard"

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A methodological study into the linguistic dimensions of pitch range differences between German and English.
(2008) Mennen, Ineke; Schaeffler, Felix; Docherty, Gerard; ESRC
The aim of this paper is to develop the methodology that would allow us to investigate the nature of variability in pitch range across speakers of different languages. In particular, we wanted to investigate whether by using linguistically based pitch range measures, such as those proposed by [1-3], we are able to characterise differences in pitch range across languages. We investigated Southern Standard British English (SSBE) and Northern Standard German (NSG), as it is often assumed that speakers of SSBE have a wider pitch range than speakers of NSG [4]. Using the linguistic measures suggested by [3], we found no such differences between NSG and SSBE, although a difference in the predicted direction was found with another linguistically based measure. Our study highlights the difficulty of using the previously suggested linguistic measures for cross-language comparisons, as some tonal structures are not equally distributed across the two languages. We therefore suggest that more suitable linguistic measures of pitch range may need to take the tonal distribution in the different languages into account.
Cross-language differences in fundamental frequency range: a comparison of English and German
(Acoustical Society of America, 2012-03) Mennen, Ineke; Schaeffler, Felix; Docherty, Gerard
This paper presents a systematic comparison of various measures of f0 range in female speakers of English and German. F0 range was analysed along two dimensions, level (i.e. overall f0 height) and span (extent of f0 modulation within a given speech sample). These were examined using two types of measures, one based on 'long-term distributional' (LTD) methods, and the other based on specific landmarks in speech that are linguistic in nature ('linguistic' measures). The various methods were used to identify whether and on what basis or bases speakers of these two languages differ in f0 range. Findings yielded significant cross-language differences in both dimensions of f0 range, but effect sizes were found to be larger for span than for level, and for linguistic than for LTD measures. The linguistic measures also uncovered some differences between the two languages in how f0 range varies through an intonation contour. This helps shed light on the relation between intonational structure and f0 range.
Pitching it differently : a comparison of the pitch ranges of German and English speakers
(2007-08) Mennen, Ineke; Schaeffler, Felix; Docherty, Gerard; This study was funded by the UK Economic & Social Research Council (RES-000-22-1858)
This paper presents preliminary findings of a largescale systematic comparison of various measures of pitch range for female speakers of Southern Standard British English (SSBE) and Northern Standard German (NSG). The purpose of the study as a whole is to develop the methodology to allow comparisons of pitch range across languages and regional accents, and to determine how they correlate with listeners' perceptual sensitivity to cross-language/accent differences. In this paper we report on how four measures of pitch range in read speech (text, sentences) compare across the two groups of female speakers. Preliminary results show that the measures of the difference between the 90th and 10th percentile (in semitones), and +/- 2 standard deviations around the mean in ST differentiate the groups of speakers in the direction predicted by the stereotypical beliefs described in the literature about German and English speakers. Furthermore, these differences are most obvious in the read text and longer sentences and the effect disappears in sentences of a short duration.