Differential sensitivity to pitch distance, particularly in speech

Hart, J. ’t

doi:10.1121/1.385592

Cited by 132 publications

(62 citation statements)

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“…This indicates markedly poorer discriminability than found for steady stimuli. Similarly, 't Hart (1981) found that about a 19% difference was necessary for successive pitch movements in the same direction to be reliably heard as different in extent. Hermes & van Gestel (1991) studied the perception of the excursion size of prominence-lending F0 movements in utterances resynthesized in different F0 registers.…”

Section: The Perception Of Pitchmentioning

confidence: 94%

Basic auditory processes involved in the analysis of speech sounds

Moore

2007

Phil. Trans. R. Soc. B

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This paper reviews the basic aspects of auditory processing that play a role in the perception of speech. The frequency selectivity of the auditory system, as measured using masking experiments, is described and used to derive the internal representation of the spectrum (the excitation pattern) of speech sounds. The perception of timbre and distinctions in quality between vowels are related to both static and dynamic aspects of the spectra of sounds. The perception of pitch and its role in speech perception are described. Measures of the temporal resolution of the auditory system are described and a model of temporal resolution based on a sliding temporal integrator is outlined. The combined effects of frequency and temporal resolution can be modelled by calculation of the spectrotemporal excitation pattern, which gives good insight into the internal representation of speech sounds. For speech presented in quiet, the resolution of the auditory system in frequency and time usually markedly exceeds the resolution necessary for the identification or discrimination of speech sounds, which partly accounts for the robust nature of speech perception. However, for people with impaired hearing, speech perception is often much less robust.

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Section: The Perception Of Pitchmentioning

confidence: 94%

Basic auditory processes involved in the analysis of speech sounds

Moore

2007

Phil. Trans. R. Soc. B

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“…As noted in cross-linguistic surveys of fundamental frequency, the typical pitch range for most human males is about 100 Hz (34)(35)(36). The just-noticeable difference between lexical tones is about 10 Hz (37), and a cross-tone pitch difference of at least 20-30 Hz is considered marginally sufficient to achieve phonemic contrast (38). These figures suggest that languages with more than three level phonemic tones present articulatory and perceptual challenges, a suggestion that is supported by work on the acquisition of tonality (39,40).…”

Section: Significancementioning

confidence: 99%

Climate, vocal folds, and tonal languages: Connecting the physiological and geographic dots

Everett

Blasí

Roberts

2015

Proc. Natl. Acad. Sci. U.S.A.

145

110

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We summarize a number of findings in laryngology demonstrating that perturbations of phonation, including increased jitter and shimmer, are associated with desiccated ambient air. We predict that, given the relative imprecision of vocal fold vibration in desiccated versus humid contexts, arid and cold ecologies should be less amenable, when contrasted to warm and humid ecologies, to the development of languages with phonemic tone, especially complex tone. This prediction is supported by data from two large independently coded databases representing 3,700+ languages. Languages with complex tonality have generally not developed in very cold or otherwise desiccated climates, in accordance with the physiologically based predictions. The predicted global geographic-linguistic association is shown to operate within continents, within major language families, and across language isolates. Our results offer evidence that human sound systems are influenced by environmental factors.climate | language | adaptation | tone A standard assumption in linguistics is that sound systems are immune to ecological effects (1). This presumption has been called into question by several recent studies providing evidence for a correlation between aspects of phonology (such as sonority) and climatic and geographic factors (such as temperature, plant cover, or terrain), as well as behaviors associated with such factors (2-9). Most recently, a correlation was uncovered between ejective sounds and regions of high elevation in a sample of nearly 600 languages (10). Although two plausible physiological motivations are offered in ref. 10 for the correlation between ejective use and reduced ambient air pressure, those explanations have yet to be supported by experimental evidence. The uncovered patterns could be epiphenomenal, and in general, the cross-linguistic statistical studies in question have not been buttressed by experimental support (11).In this study, we offer evidence for a negative correlation between linguistic tone and characteristic rates of desiccation in ambient air. In contradistinction to the aforementioned studies offering geographic/phonetic correlations, however, we suggest this correlation is predicted by extensive experimental research on the properties of the human larynx. This research, which has been conducted by numerous laryngologists over the last decade and a half, has not been previously tied to the distribution of the world's tonal languages. We submit that the research predicts that the relatively precise manipulation of the vocal folds associated with tone, especially complex tone, should be more difficult to achieve in arid climates-particularly very cold ones-when contrasted to warmer and more humid climates. We offer global, continental, and intralinguistic-family data consistent with the expected geographic/tonemic association. Our results cannot facilely be ascribed to well-known phylogenetic and areal relatedness. We conclude by suggesting that the most reasonable interpretation of the data is that the a...

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“…The literature indicates that only pitch differences of more than three semitones can be discriminated reliably in speech [49]. This suggests that misclassifications by less than three semitones would not affect the intended meaning of an intonational change during speech.…”

Section: Standalone Evaluationmentioning

confidence: 99%