Speaker identity indicators in the domain of the temporal modulation of the speech signal

AbstractAbstractAbstractAbstract This diploma thesis aims to contribute to the field of speaker recognition in the domain of temporal changes in the speech signal. After a brief introduction into forensic phonetics, it gives an outline of approaches and factors which help or hinder successful recognition. The focus is then shifted to the temporal structure of speech and approaches to its analysis currently in use. The practical section of this thesis consists of an experiment designed to assess the contribution of certain temporal measures to speaker recognition. The variables used here are %V (the proportion of vocalic intervals within a sentence), ΔV and ΔC (the standard deviation of the duration of vocalic/consonantal intervals within a sentence), VarcoV and VarcoC (the previous variables normalised for average interval duration) and the Pairwise Variability Indices, both vocalic and consonantal, raw and normalised. Beside these, another variable is used to capture the local articulation rate and especially final deceleration in the utterances - LAR (the inverse of the distance between successive midpoints of the vocalic intervals). Whereas the first mentioned variables are not very successful in distinguishing the speakers, LAR seems very well suited for capturing speaker idiosyncrasies, although..