Doctoral Dissertation Research: Phonetics of period doubling

人的声音是言语的重要组成部分，用来识别和区分说话人。关于人类语言的一个基本问题是语音质量如何影响语音的产生和感知。这个项目通过观察自然语音中的“周期加倍”来解决这个问题，在自然语音中，声音具有粗糙的质量和多个音高。这也经常发生在病态的声音和演唱风格中。本论文项目提供了以下方面的见解：1)与其他音质相比，周期加倍的发音和声学特性；2)周期加倍时感知音高与音质的交互作用；第三，语点翻倍在语言语气感知中的作用。这些发现与语言学、语言病理学和音乐中的声音理论有关。语音质量的研究提高了我们对典型声音和障碍声音之间差异的理解，这可以被临床医生用来改进对声带病理个体的诊断和治疗策略。更好地理解典型语音中周期加倍的分布对于改进文本转语音和自动语音识别中使用的音高检测和语音合成技术也很重要。目前的项目旨在探索人们在处理语言信息时如何产生和利用语音质量。它由三个研究组成。研究1通过对一种声调语言中不同语音类型的生成实验，探讨重音的发音和声学特性及其语言分布。研究2研究了使用合成语音控制各种声学特性时的音高和声音感知。研究3考察了周期加倍和其他音质在声调识别中的作用，目的是解释不同语音类型中音高和声音之间的相互作用，以及它们在区分单词中的作用。该奖项反映了美国国家科学基金会的法定使命，并通过使用基金会的知识价值和更广泛的影响审查标准进行评估，被认为值得支持。

The human voice is an essential part of speech, serving to identify and distinguish talkers. A fundamental question regarding human language is how voice quality affects speech production and perception. This project approaches the question by looking at “period doubling” in natural speech, where a voice has a rough quality and more than one pitch. This also frequently occurs in pathological voice and singing styles. This dissertation project provides insight into 1) the articulatory and acoustic properties of period doubling, compared to those of other voice qualities; 2) the interaction between perceived pitch and voice quality in period doubling; and 3) the role of period doubling in the perception of linguistic tone. The findings are relevant to theories of the voice in linguistics, speech-language pathology, and music. The study of voice quality improves our understanding of the differences between typical and disordered voices, which can be used by clinicians to improve diagnoses and therapy strategies for individuals with vocal pathology. A better understanding of the distribution of period doubling in typical speech is also important to improving pitch detection and voice synthesis technologies, which are used in text-to-speech and automatic speech recognition.The current project serves as a probe of how people produce and make use of voice quality when processing linguistic information. It consists of three studies. Study 1 includes a production experiment of different voice types in a tonal language to investigate the articulatory and acoustic properties of period doubling and its linguistic distribution. Study 2 investigates pitch and voice perception during period doubling using synthesized speech that is controlled for various acoustic properties. Study 3 investigates the role of period doubling and other voice qualities in tone identification, with the goal of explaining the interaction between pitch and voice in different voice types, and the roles they play in distinguishing words.This award reflects NSF's statutory mission and has been deemed worthy of support through evaluation using the Foundation's intellectual merit and broader impacts review criteria.