Acoustic phonetics of European Portuguese fricative consonants
The production of fricatives is not yet fully understood because the mechanism is particularly complex. Studies of Portuguese fricatives have been very limited, so in this thesis a novel methodology of corpus design, and temporal and spectral analysis techniques were developed to enhance our description of the acoustic properties, and to increase our understanding of the production of fricatives. The data presented in this thesis could be used to improve the naturalness of synthetic speech. Corpora were devised that included the fricatives /f, v, s, z, J, 3/ in the following contexts: sustained, repeated nonsense words of the form /PV1CV2/, Portuguese words containing fricatives in frame sentences, and the same set of words in sentences. Four subjects (two male, two female) were recorded saying the corpora, using a microphone in the acoustic far - field and a laryngograph. Temporal analysis of the fricatives revealed a large number of devoiced examples. Analysis of variance showed that devoicing was significantly more likely for word-final fricatives and posterior place of articulation. In addition to the fricatives listed above, we also noticed other fricatives occurring as allophones of / r , r / in 100
Teixeira de Jesus, Luis Miguel
Linguistics
Acoustic phonetics of European Portuguese fricative consonants. The production of fricatives is not yet fully understood because the mechanism is particularly complex. Studies of Portuguese fricatives have been very limited, so in this thesis a novel methodology of corpus design, and temporal and spectral analysis techniques were developed to enhance our description of the acoustic properties, and to increase our understanding of the production of fricatives. The data presented in this thesis could be used to improve the naturalness of synthetic speech. Corpora were devised that included the fricatives /f, v, s, z, J, 3/ in the following contexts: sustained, repeated nonsense words of the form /PV1CV2/, Portuguese words containing fricatives in frame sentences, and the same set of words in sentences. Four subjects (two male, two female) were recorded saying the corpora, using a microphone in the acoustic far - field and a laryngograph. Temporal analysis of the fricatives revealed a large number of devoiced examples. Analysis of variance showed that devoicing was significantly more likely for word-final fricatives and posterior place of articulation. In addition to the fricatives listed above, we also noticed other fricatives occurring as allophones of / r , r / in 100
acoustic phonetics european portuguese fricative consonant production fricative yet_fully understood mechanism particularly complex studies portuguese fricative limit novel corpus design temporal spectral analysis technique develop enhance description acoustic property increase_production fricative data_present could_use improve naturalness synthetic speech corpora devise include fricative follow context sustain repeat nonsense word_form portuguese word_contain fricative frame sentence set word_sentence subject male female record say corpus use acoustic far field temporal_analysis fricative reveal large_number example analysis variance show significantly likely word_final fricative posterior place_articulation addition fricative list also notice fricative occur