Fact and fiction in the description of female and male pitch

Henton, Caroline

doi:10.1016/0271-5309(89)90026-8

Cited by 75 publications

(46 citation statements)

References 27 publications

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“…There are still relatively few studies on acoustic correlates of discourse and gender identity (see Clopper & Smiljanic 2011:238 and literature cited therein) that go beyond evolutionary observations (Ohala 1983, Gussenhoven 2002 29 patently than men. Some early studies had failed to produce actual data proving that there was any truth in the stereotype (Henton 1989(Henton , 1995, whereas Daly & Warren (2001:85) did find more pitch dynamism in (New Zealand) female speech compared to the prosodically 'flatter' speech of men, and the experiments discussed by Gussenhoven (2002, section 3.1) also show that there is some widespread expectation of wider pitch ranges in female than in male speech. Whatever the sociolinguistic interpretation of a more dynamic pitch use in female speech may be, we do find that women are more likely to use contour tones, i.e.…”

Section: Gender and Intonationmentioning

confidence: 99%

New Information in Naturalistic Data Is Also Signalled by Pitch Movement: An Analysis from Monolingual English/Spanish and Bilingual Spanish Speakers

Gries

Miglio²

2014

Comp.J. Eng. Stud.

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In communication, speakers and listeners need ways to highlight certain information and relegate other information to the background. They also need to keep track of what information they (think they) have already communicated to the listener, and of the listeners' (supposed) knowledge of topics and referents. This knowledge and its layout in the utterance is commonly referred to as information structure, i.e., the degree to which propositions and referents are given or new. All languages have 'chosen' different ways to encode such information structure, for instance by modifying the pitch or intensity of the vocal signal or the order of words in a sentence. In this study, we assess whether the use of pitch to signal new information holds in typologically different languages such as English and Spanish by analyzing three population group monolingual California English speakers, bilingual speakers of English and Spanish from California (Chicano Spanish), and monolingual Mexican Spanish speakers from Mexico City.Our study goes beyond previous work in several respects. First, most current work is based on sentences just read or elicited in response to highly standardized and often somewhat artificial stimuli whose generalizability to more naturalistic settings may be questionable. We opted instead to use semidirected interviews whose more naturalistic setting provides data with a higher degree of authenticity. Second, in order to deal with the resulting higher degree of noise in the data as well as the inherent multifactoriality of the data, we are using state-of-the-art statistical methods to explore our data, namely generalized linear mixed-effects modeling, to accommodate speaker-and lexically-specific variability. Despite the noisy data, we find that contour tones including H+L or L+H sequences signal new information, and that items encoding new information also exhibit proportionally longer stressed vowels, than those encoding given information. We also find cross-dialectal variation between monolingual Mexican Spanish speakers on the one hand and monolingual English speakers and Chicanos on the other: Mexican Spanish speakers modify pitch contours less than monolingual English speakers, whereas the English patterns affect even the Spanish pronunciation of early bilinguals. Our findings, therefore, corroborate Gussenhoven's theory (2002) that some aspects of intonation are shared cross-linguistically (longer vowel length & higher pitch for new info), whereas others are encoded language-specifically and vary even across dialects (pitch excursion & the packaging of information structure).

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Section: Gender and Intonationmentioning

confidence: 99%

New Information in Naturalistic Data Is Also Signalled by Pitch Movement: An Analysis from Monolingual English/Spanish and Bilingual Spanish Speakers

Gries

Miglio²

2014

Comp.J. Eng. Stud.

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“…Some reports have suggested that prosodic variation is wider in women than in men (Fitch & Holbrook, 1970;Graddol & Swann, 1983;Hudson & Holbrook, 1981;Stoicheff, 1981), although there is some disagreement on this point (cf. Henton, 1989). Bachorowski and Owren (1999) reported linear discriminant analysis results using acoustic measures made from the vowel / / in the word test.…”

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confidence: 99%

The role of f 0 and formant frequencies in distinguishing the voices of men and women

Hillenbrand

Clark

2009

Attention, Perception, & Psychophysics

181

112

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The purpose of the present study was to determine the contributions of fundamental frequency ( f 0 ) and formants in cuing the distinction between men's and women's voices. A source-filter synthesizer was used to create four versions of 25 sentences spoken by men: (1) unmodified synthesis, (2) f 0 only shifted up toward values typical of women, (3) formants only shifted up toward values typical of women, and (4) both f 0 and formants shifted up. Identical methods were used to generate four corresponding versions of 25 sentences spoken by women, but with downward shifts. Listening tests showed that (1) shifting both f 0 and formants was usually effective (~82%) in changing the perceived sex of the utterance, and (2) shifting either f 0 or formants alone was usually ineffective in changing the perceived sex. Both f 0 and formants are apparently needed to specify speaker sex, though even together these cues are not entirely effective. Results also suggested that f 0 is somewhat more important than formants. A second experiment used the same methods, but isolated /hVd/ syllables were used as test signals. Results were broadly similar, with the important exception that, on average, the syllables were more likely to shift perceived talker sex with shifts in f 0 and/or formants.

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“…Many researchers in language and gender have found differences in perception and use of intonational patterns of females versus males (e.g. Brend 1972;Fichtelius, Johansson, and Nordin 1980;Ohara 1992; but see Henton 1989). Stereotypically, female speech includes a greater intonation range than male speech (e.g.…”

Section: Introductionmentioning

confidence: 99%

“…Her study suggested that men avoid the highest level of pitch that women use, giving men a smaller range of pitch than women. Her work led to other linguistic research on male and female intonation based on informal observations (e.g., Lakoff 1975;McConnell-Ginet 1983), to acoustic analysis of gender-based intonational patterns (e.g., Fichtelius, Johansson, and Nordin 1980;Henton 1989Henton , 1995, and to the first investigations on whether sexual orientation might have an intonational correlation (Gaudio 1994;Moonwoman 1985). Gaudio (1994) investigated whether the stereotype of gay men's pitch being more dynamic than non-gay men's pitch would be reflected in a controlled perceptual study and in acoustic analysis.…”

Section: Introductionmentioning

confidence: 99%

Pitch range and women's sexual orientation

Waksler¹

2001

WORD</i>

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RACHELLEWAKSLER'------------------------ Pitch range and women's sexual orientationAbstract. The interaction between intonational patterns and speaker gender has long been noted in the language and gender literature (e.g., Brend 1972, Lakoff 1975, McConnell-Ginet 1983, Ohara 1992. It has also been hypothesized (Moonwomon 1985, Queen 1997) that intonation may be a locus of difference between lesbian and heterosexual women's speech. This paper investigates the question of whether there is an interaction between pitch range and sexual orientation in women. An experiment was carried out in San Francisco in which 24 lesbians and straight women were individually audiotaped recounting the plot of the movie The Wizard of Oz. Data are thus controlled as much as possible for content and communicative situation, while remaining as natural speech. Acoustic analysis of the recordings suggests that pitch range is not a distinguishing factor for female sexual orientation.

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Fact and fiction in the description of female and male pitch

Cited by 75 publications

References 27 publications

New Information in Naturalistic Data Is Also Signalled by Pitch Movement: An Analysis from Monolingual English/Spanish and Bilingual Spanish Speakers

New Information in Naturalistic Data Is Also Signalled by Pitch Movement: An Analysis from Monolingual English/Spanish and Bilingual Spanish Speakers

The role of f 0 and formant frequencies in distinguishing the voices of men and women

Pitch range and women's sexual orientation

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