VILE: Acoustic Study of Inter and Intra Speaker Variation in Spanish

The aim of the VILE project is the acoustic phonetic analysis of inter and intra-speaker variation in Spanish with particular emphasis in obtaining useful results for automatic speaker identification and for forensic phonetic practices. The first phase of the project –presented in this paper – has consisted in a review of the literature dealing with the acoustic parameters which are relevant for speaker identification, and in an analysis of existing spoken corpora in Spanish from which the data analysed in the project will be taken. 1. THE VILE PROJECT VILE (Estudio acústico de la variación inter e intra en español- Acoustic Study of Inter and Intra Speaker Variation in Spanish) is a research project1 whose main purpose is the acoustic analysis of phonetic variation in Spanish in order to apply its results to the automatic recognition of speakers and to the practice of forensic phonetics. VILE seeks three aims: (i) to characterise from an acoustic point of view segmental and suprasegmental elements that contribute to a speaker’s individuality, as opposed to those that are common to a speech style, a geographic or social variety, or to a language; (ii) to obtain the phonetic knowledge needed t