ITRW on Experimental Linguistics Athens, Greece August 28-30, 2006

Acoustics of Speech and Environmental Sounds

Susana M. Capitão Silva (1), Luis M. T. Jesus (2), Mário A. L. Alves (3)

(1) Secção Autónoma de Ciências da Saúde, Universidade de Aveiro and Direcção Regional da Educação do Norte, Ministério da Educação, Portugal
(2)Escola Superior de Saúde da Universidade de Aveiro and Instituto de Engenharia Electrónica e Telemática de Aveiro, Universidade de Aveiro, Portugal
(3) Hospital Senhora da Oliveira, Guimarães, Portugal

In this study we present a preliminary acoustic analysis of environmental sound stimuli, based on Gaver’s (1993) classification. Results showed similarities between sounds produced by objects with the same type of material and interaction. We also designed an experiment, where the subjects had to propose onomatopoeic representations for environmental sounds. The onomatopoeic representations used by the subjects shared common speech features (manner and place of articulation, and vowels used).

Full Paper

Bibliographic reference.  Capitão Silva, Susana M. / Jesus, Luis M. T. / Alves, Mário A. L. (2006): "Acoustics of speech and environmental sounds", In ExLing-2006, 221-224.