Is fundamental frequency meaningful for severe substitution voices such as esophageal speech?

Abstract

This paper treats the problem of esophageal speech characterization using common features such as fundamental frequency. First of all, a new technique based on auto-correlation function is developed in order to measure the fundamental frequency, and this regardless to the kind of voice (healthy, pathological and esophageal). Secondly, an analysis is done and puts in doubt the notion of fundamental frequency and therefore the periodicity notion of the esophagus extremity vibration. © 2011 Springer-Verlag.