Invariant acoustic cues in stop constants: A cross language study using the Wigner distribution
Harinath Garudadri, JOHN H.V. GILBERT, André-Pierre Benguerel, M.P. Beddoes · The Journal of the Acoustical Society of America · 1986
The Wigner distribution (WD) is a powerful tool in analyzing the speech signals [Garudadri et al., J. Acoust. Soc. Am. Suppl. 1 79, S94 (1986)]. The WD is being used to investigate acoustic invariance in stop consonants. In a pilot study of CV syllables, bilabials showed an energy concentration in the low-frequency region during the burst, followed by the formant pattern of the vowel. Alveolars had a diffuse spectrum prior to the vowel region; they were also characterized by an absence of low-frequency energy during the burst of the voiceless tokens. Velars displayed a distinctly compact spectrum centered near the frequency of the second formant of the vowel. The diffuse nature of the bilabials and alveolars, reported by Lahiri et al. [J. Acoust. Soc. Am. 76, 391–404 (1984)] and by the authors referenced therein, can be attributed to the temporal averaging of the burst spectrum and the diffuse vowel spectrum. This smear does not occur in velars because their burst is quite long. The WD allows one to study the burst and vowel spectra independently of each other without introducing any substantial time averaging. A formal study of the invariant acoustic properties of stop consonants from English, French, and Telugu is underway. The results of the study will be presented. [Work supported in part by NSERC, Canada.]