In Proc. of the Japan-China Joint Conference of Acoustics, Sendai, 2007 (Best Paper Award)
Contribution of consonants and vowels to the perception of speaker identity
K. Amino and T. Arai
Abstract: In many studies, it is reported that stimulus contents affect the perceptual speaker dentification. In our previous research, we showed that nasal sounds are effective for accurate speaker identification. In this present study, we investigate the contributions of the syllable onset consonants (C) and the syllable nucleus (V) to the perception of the speaker identity by using the hybrid CV monosyllables where C and V are uttered by two different speakers. The results showed that perceived speaker of the hybrid CV syllables was inclined to be the speaker of V, and this tendency was prominent especially with the stimuli containing nasal consonants. This suggests that vowels mainly convey speaker individuality, and nasalised vowels contain more speaker information than oral vowels.