On Talker Voice and Language Identification

Listener similarity judgments of languages seem to be influenced by regional speech characteristics and talker voice quality, and listener responses to voice quality are influenced by language. This study attempted to assess the relationships between judgments about voice quality and judgments about language. In the first experiment, using an ABX format listeners matched spoken samples of unknown languages when produced by male and female talkers. Overall, listeners performed at above chance level. In the second experiment, listeners rated the similarity of the same talkers. Listeners found talkers most similar when they were paired with themselves. They judged talkers speaking the same language as more similar than talkers speaking a different language, even across gender.

[1]  Zinny S. Bond,et al.  Same talker, different language , 2000, Applied Psycholinguistics.

[2]  Ian Maddieson,et al.  Factors in human language identification , 2002, INTERSPEECH.

[3]  Paul Meara,et al.  How people listen to languages they don't know , 1989 .

[4]  G Strube,et al.  The role of language familiarity in voice identification , 1991, Memory & cognition.

[5]  J. Esling,et al.  Voice Quality Settings and the Teaching of Pronunciation. , 1983 .

[6]  M. P. Gelfer.  A multidimensional scaling study of voice quality in females. , 1993, Phonetica.

[7]  Ronald A. Cole,et al.  Automatic segmentation and identification of ten languages using telephone speech , 1992, ICSLP.

[8]  Zinny S. Bond,et al.  Same talker, different language: a replication , 2002, INTERSPEECH.

[9]  T Murry,et al.  Multidimensional classification of normal voice qualities. , 1977, The Journal of the Acoustical Society of America.

[10]  S. Goldinger,et al.  Episodic encoding of voice attributes and recognition memory for spoken words. , 1993, Journal of experimental psychology. Learning, memory, and cognition.

[11]  S. Thornbury.  Having a good jaw: voice-setting phonology , 1993 .

[12]  Lynn M. Farnsworth,et al.  The perceptual representation of voice gender. , 1995, The Journal of the Acoustical Society of America.

[13]  Zinny S. Bond,et al.  Distinguishing Samples of Spoken Korean from Rhythmic and Regional Competitors. , 2002 .

[14]  T Murry,et al.  Multidimensional analysis of male and female voices. , 1980, The Journal of the Acoustical Society of America.