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Objective evaluation of vowel pronunciation

1991; Acoustical Society of America; Volume: 89; Issue: 4B_Supplement Linguagem: Inglês

10.1121/1.2029328

1520-9024

Mark J. Bakkum, R. Plomp, L.C.W. Pols,

Phonetics and Phonology Research

Usually pronunciation is evaluated subjectively by listening. The aim of this research project is to obtain an objective measure of the quality of pronunciation. All 15 Dutch monophthongs and diphthongs spoken by 24 males (deaf, foreign, and native Dutch norm speakers) were spectrally analyzed. The digital, real-time analysis system consisted of 16 bandfilters according to the critical-band model. Besides level and speaker normalization, time averaging was also applied so that all vowels were determined by a single point in a 16-dimensional spectral space. By principal components analysis, the number of dimensions was reduced, thus making a plain visualization possible. The feasibility of the objective evaluation has been investigated by considering to what extent the spectral information, as expressed in various distance measures, does give an adequate description of subjective judgments of the vowels, as obtained by experienced listeners. The overall scores (averaged over 15 vowels, after PCA) show a correlation coefficient of 0.97. Correlations per vowel are lower, but significant in nearly all cases. [Work supported by Netherlands Organization of Scientific Research (NWO) and Institute for the Deaf, Sint-Michielsgestel.]