Influence of duration on static and dynamic properties of German vowels in spontaneous spee.pdfVIP

INFLUENCE OF DURATION ON STATIC AND DYNAMIC PROPERTIES OF GERMAN VOWELS IN SPONTANEOUS SPEECH Britta Wrede, Gernot A. Fink, Gerhard Sagerer Bielefeld University, Faculty of Technology, 33594 Bielefeld, Germany e-Mail: fbwrede, gernot, sagerer g@techfak.uni-bielefeld.de ABSTRACT speech is that of vowel reduction. The formant frequencies Changes in speech rate severely affect the performance of of the German cardinal vowels /a:/ /i:/ and /u:/ describe a continuous speech recognition systems. In order to better vowel triangle in the space spanned by the first and second understand the underlying effects of speech rate changes an formants F1 and F2 (cf. Fig. 1). If these vowels are re- analysis was carried out on the influence of duration on the duced due to shorter duration the formant frequencies tend spectral properties of vowels in a large German corpus of to become more centralised within this triangle. Shorter spontaneous speech. The results show a strong centralisa- duration is not only a result of faster speech but also of un- tion effect of the vowel formant frequencies due to shorter stressed speech. Therefore, many experiments on reduction duration while the formant movements are only slightly af- are based on tempo as well as on stress. fected. The data suggest that the movement velocity is not In [4] tempo and stress, both, had a strong influence changed in vowels with a limited duration. As the means on the vowel space area. The area w