Formant measurement in children's speech based on spectral filtering.

ABSTRACT: Children's speech presents a challenging problem for formant frequency measurement. In part, this is because high fundamental frequencies, typical of a children's speech production, generate widely spaced harmonic components that may undersample the spectral shape of the vocal tract transfer function. In addition, there is often a weakening of upper harmonic energy and a noise component due to glottal turbulence. The purpose of this study was to develop a formant measurement technique based on cepstral analysis that does not require modification of the cepstrum itself or transformation back to the spectral domain. Instead, a narrow-band spectrum is low-pass filtered with a cutoff point (i.e., cutoff "quefrency" in the terminology of cepstral analysis) to preserve only the spectral envelope

SUBMITTER: Story BH 

PROVIDER: S-EPMC4743040 | biostudies-literature | 2015

REPOSITORIES: biostudies-literature