Speaker Identification Using Vowels /i/ and /ɑ/ at Normal Pitch and High Pitch
Sreeparna Sarkar · Linguistics and Literature Studies · 2016
In this paper, a speaker identification experiment is conducted where four male speakers are recorded in their normal pitch, uttering Cardinal Vowels 1 and 5, /i/ and /ɑ/ respectively. Out of these four speakers, one speaker is recorded in high pitch. The listeners are asked to identify the same speakers from lists of contrastive pairs of speakers in normal pitch in one set and normal and high pitch in another. This was done in order to study the effect of changing pitch on the listeners' ability to identify same speakers accurately. We also change the vowels in certain tests to examine whether the change in vowels affects the efficiency of speaker identification more or change in pitch. The results indicate that it is indeed more difficult to identify speakers when they change their voice from normal pitch to high pitch. Change in vowel also shows drop in correct answers, but not as much as change in pitch does.