What is rhythm? Can we capture syllable shapes from intensity contours?

International Workshop on Frontiers in Speech and Hearing Research, Technical Report of IEICE Japan, Vol. SP2005-183, pp. 121-126, 2006

What is rhythm? Can we capture syllable shapes from intensity contours?

M. Komatsu and T. Arai

Abstract: Rhythm can be viewed in two different ways. Acoustic approach views rhythm as the alternating pattern of high and low intensity, which is regarded as a syllable. Phonemic approach attributes rhythm to the phonemic complexity of syllable structure and calculates rhythm based on the durations of consonant and vowel intervals. This paper investigates how well the acoustic approach fits to the phonemic approach. It tests two algorithms adopted in our previous studies, which estimate syllable centers from intensity contours based on the calculation of RMS and correlation with a cosine curve. The results are evaluated against the criteria of the phonemic approach. It concludes that the algorithms are valid, hence syllable shapes can be captured from the intensity contour.

Keywords: Rhythm, Syllable, Intensity, RMS, Correlation coefficients

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