Age-related Changes in the Acoustic Characteristics of Voiceless English Fricatives
Keywords
Phonetics, acoustics, microphones, vowel systems
Abstract
This study examines the acoustic characteristics of voiceless fricatives in American English ([f, θ, s, ∫]) in children and adults (ranging in age from 3 to 70 years). Twenty speakers from seven different age groups produced four different examples of each fricative in word‐initial position (in 20 different monosyllabic words varying in terms of medial vowel). Each speaker also produced these fricatives intervocalically (in the context [ɑ Cɑ]). These data are drawn, in part, from a large‐scale acoustic database developed in collaboration with ATR. All tokens were recorded using high‐quality microphones and direct analog‐to‐digital conversion to disk at a sampling rate of 22.05 kHz. Acoustic measurements include fricative duration, vowel duration, spectral moments, spectral peak locations, absolute and relative noise amplitude, spectral tilt, and F2 onset frequency. Of primary interest is to determine whether these four fricatives can be distinguished using the same subset of acoustic properties as reported in Jongman and colleagues [Jongman et al., J. Acoust. Soc. Am. 108, 1252–1263] across variations in the age and gender of the speaker. [Work supported, in part, by an INRS Award from NIH and research funding from ATR, Fox, P.I.]
Original Publication Citation
Fox, R. A., Nissen, S. L., & Rosenbauer, K. (2001). Age-related changes in the acoustic characteristics of voiceless English fricatives. The Journal of the Acoustical Society of America, 110(5)A, 2704.
BYU ScholarsArchive Citation
Nissen, Shawn L.; Fox, Robert Allen; McGory, Julie; and Rosenbauer, Kimberly, "Age-related Changes in the Acoustic Characteristics of Voiceless English Fricatives" (2001). Faculty Publications. 7406.
https://scholarsarchive.byu.edu/facpub/7406
Document Type
Presentation
Publication Date
2001-11-01
Language
English
College
David O. McKay School of Education
Department
Communication Disorders
Copyright Status
© 2001 Acoustical Society of America
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