Ibrahim, Omnia; Yuen, Ivan; van Os, Marjolein; Andreeva, Bistra; Möbius, Bernd
The effect of Lombard speech modifications in different information density contexts
Elektronische Sprachsignalverarbeitung 2021, Tagungsband der 32. Konferenz (Berlin), TUDpress, pp. 185-191, Dresden, 2021.
Speakers adapt their speech to increase clarity in the presence of back-ground noise (Lombard speech) [1, 2]. However, they also modify their speech tobe efficient by shortening word duration in more predictable contexts [3]. To meetthese two communicative functions, speakers will attempt to resolve any conflicting communicative demands. The present study focuses on how this can be resolvedin the acoustic domain. A total of 1520 target CV syllables were annotated andanalysed from 38 German speakers in 2 white-noise (no noise vs. -10 dB SNR) and 2 surprisal (H vs. L) contexts. Median fundamental frequency (F0), intensityrange, and syllable duration were extracted. Our results revealed effects of bothnoise and surprisal on syllable duration and intensity range, but only an effect ofnoise on F0. This might suggest redundant (multi-dimensional) acoustic coding in Lombard speech modification, but not so in surprisal modification.