title: Acoustic characteristics of Mandarin esophageal speech.
abstract: The present study attempted to investigate the acoustic characteristics of Mandarin laryngeal and esophageal speech. Eight normal laryngeal and seven esophageal speakers participated in the acoustic experiments. Results from acoustic analyses of syllables /ma/and /ba/ indicated that, F0, intensity, and signal-to-noise ratio of laryngeal speech were significantly higher than those of esophageal speech. However, opposite results were found for vowel duration, jitter, and shimmer. Mean F0, intensity, and word per minute in reading were greater but number of pauses was smaller in laryngeal speech than those in esophageal speech. Similar patterns of F0 contours and vowel duration as a function of tone were found between laryngeal and esophageal speakers. Long-time spectra analysis indicated that higher first and second formant frequencies were associated with esophageal speech than that with normal laryngeal speech.
authors.affiliation: The Key Laboratory of Biomedical Information Engineering of Ministry of Education, Department of Biomedical Engineering, School of Life Science and Technology, Xi'an Jiaotong University, Xi'an, 710049, People's Republic of China.
authors.forename: Hanjun
authors.initials: H
authors.lastname: Liu
authors.forename: Mingxi
authors.initials: M
authors.lastname: Wan
authors.forename: Supin
authors.initials: S
authors.lastname: Wang
authors.forename: Xiaodong
authors.initials: X
authors.lastname: Wang
authors.forename: Chunmei
authors.initials: C
authors.lastname: Lu
mesh_terms: D000368:Aged; D006801:Humans; D008297:Male; D008875:Middle Aged; D010700:Phonetics; D013018:Sound Spectrography; D013061:Speech Acoustics; D013065:Speech Intelligibility; D013068:Speech Production Measurement; D013072:Speech, Esophageal