Acoustic-phonetic Analysis of Prominence in Swedish

Abstract

This is an integrated study of the role of subglottal pressure and other acoustic parameters as correlated of perceived syllabic prominence in Swedish text reading. The covariation and interdepandencies of sub- and supraglottal pressure, articulation and source parameters, F0, and intensity have been studied in short lab speech sentences and in the reading of a prose text of about one minute length. Continuously scaled syllable prominence, Rs, has been determined from listening tests, and is added to our standard measurement display in synchrony with oscillogram, spectrogram, F0, and two intensity parameters, the sound pressure level SPL, and a high frequency pre-emphasized measure, the SPLH. For documentary purposes, the complete material from the text reading has been included. Most of the principal results from the analysis have been published in our earlier publication but are reviewed here. Of special interest is the predictability of SPL from sub-glottal pressure and F0 and their temporal patterns, in particular in relation to stress and prominence. A novelty is the analysis of sub- and supraglottal pressures in vowels and consonants in stressed and unstressed context. Another object of analysis is the spectral dynamics associated with pre-occlusion aspiration of stressed vowels.