This paper continues our work on the perception of prominence as a function of F0 continuity. In an earlier study the first author had shown that F0 intervals occurring at lexically accented syllables -and measured using the amplitude of Fujisaki model accent commands -strongly contribute to the perceived prominence of that syllable. More recent work explored how F0 continuity influenced prominence ratings of single word utterances. The outcome indicated that listeners made use of the physically available F0 information and therefore words containing gaps in the contour were perceived as less prominent. It was also shown that subjects were able to interpolate missing parts as long as the F0 peak was still present. The current study explores whether subjects compensate the lack of prominence in words containing F0 gaps by asking them to produce a word with the same accent strength as that of an acoustic word stimulus, the acoustic word either being the same or different from the one they are asked to utter. We evaluated word durations, F0 intervals and intensities of the responses as correlates of prominence and found that listeners indeed seem to adjust depending on the kind of stimulus they are presented.

The present study concerns speech productions of female and male English/French bilingual speakers in both reading and semi-spontaneous speech tasks. We investigated various acoustic parameters: average fundamental sound frequency (F0), F0 range, F0 variance ( SD), vowel formants (F1, F2, and F3), voice onset time (VOT) and H1-H2 (intensity difference between the first and the second harmonic frequencies, used to measure phonation type) in both languages. Our results revealed a significant effect of gender and language on all parameters. Overall, average F0 was higher in French while F0 modulation was stronger in English. Regardless of language, female speakers exhibited higher F0 than male speakers. Moreover, the higher average F0 in French was larger in female speakers. On the other hand, the smaller F0 modulation in French was stronger in male speakers. The analysis of vowel formants showed that overall, female speakers exhibited higher values than males. However, we found a significant cross-gender difference on F2 of the back vowel [u:] in English, but not on the vowel [u] in French. VOT of voiceless stops was longer in Female speakers in both languages, with a greater difference in English. VOT contrast between voiceless stops and their voiced counterparts was also significantly longer in female speakers in both languages. The scope of this cross-gender difference was greater in English. H1-H2 was higher in female speakers in both languages, indicating a breathier phonation type. Furthermore, female speakers tended to exhibit smaller H1-H2 in French, while the opposite was true in males. This resulted in a smaller cross-gender difference in French for this parameter. All these data support the idea of language- and gender-specific vocal norms, to which bilingual speakers seem to adapt. This constitutes a further argument to give social factors, such as gender dynamics, more consideration in phonetic studies.

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Several previous studies showed that synthetic vowel identification is more difficult for voices with a high f0 (the lowest frequency that defines voice pitch), but it is not clear whether this means that female voices, which generally have a higher f0, are processed more slowly than male voices. A word spotting experiment was conducted with 25 French native listeners (8 men, 17 women; M age = 27.6 yr., SD = 10.8). Words produced by four male and four female speakers were played to the participants. Their task was to press a button every time they identified the target word "étage." Response times were collected and compared in four different conditions: male voice preceded by male voices, female voice preceded by female voices, male voice preceded by female voices, and female voice preceded by male voices. Results showed that both sexes' voices were processed equally fast. Moreover, no significant correlation was found between mean f0 of the target word and response time. Nevertheless, when a target word produced by a male speaker occurred after several words produced by a female speaker (or vice-versa) the listener's RT decreased, suggesting that male and female voices are processed as two different entities.

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