The contribution of dynamic versus static formant information in conversational speech

The relative contributions of static and dynamic formant representations to speaker-specificity were investigated in conversational speech and in two vowels varyingin inherent spectral change. Using polynomial fits, the contribution of dynamicformant coefficients to speaker-specificity relative to that of the formant interceptwas investigated in the diphthongal vowel [ei] taken from English and Dutch conversationalspeech. The [ei] tokens were sampled from various linguistic contextsand analysed in an LR approach. Results show that formant dynamics containspeaker-specific information in conversational speech even though the high contextualvariation seems to reduce its effect relative to that reported by earlier work.Vowels differ in inherent dynamicity and therefore, the added value of dynamicformant information to speaker-specificity was also compared between vowels differingin inherent spectral change. Using Dutch data, the contribution of formantdynamics to speaker-specificity was compared between [ei] and [aː] tokens producedby the same speakers. Formant dynamics in conversational speech only contributedto speaker-specificity in the diphthong [ei], not in the monophthong [aː].