Acoustic analysis of the voiced-voiceless distinction in Dutch tracheoesophageal speech.

Purpose: Confusions between voiced and voiceless plosives and voiced and voiceless fricatives are common in Dutch tracheoesophageal (TE) speech. This study investigates (a) which acoustic measures are found to convey a correct voicing contrast in TE speech and (b) whether different measures are found in TE speech than in normal laryngeal (NL) speech. The main focus was on plosives.

Praat script to detect syllable nuclei and measure speech rate automatically.

In this article, we describe a method for automatically detecting syllable nuclei in order to measure speech rate without the need for a transcription. A script written in the software program Praat (Boersma & Weenink, 2007) detects syllables in running speech. Peaks in intensity (dB) that are preceded and followed by dips in intensity are considered to be potential syllable nuclei.

Comparing deaf and hearing Dutch infants: changes in the vowel space in the first 2 years.

The influence of the mother tongue on vowel productions in infancy is different for deaf and hearing babies. Audio material of five hearing and five deaf infants acquiring Dutch was collected monthly from month 5-18, and at 24 months. Fifty unlabelled utterances were digitized for each recording.