ITRW on Speech and Emotion September 5-7, 2000 Newcastle, Northern Ireland, UK

Accentuation and emotions - two different systems?

Kai Alter (1), Erhard Rank (2), Sonja A. Kotz (1), Ulrike Toepel (3), Mireille Besson (4), Annett Schirmer (1), and Angela D. Friederici (1)

(1) Max-Planck-Institute of Cognitive Neuroscience, Leipzig, Germany
(2) Institute of Communications and Radio-Frequency Engineering, Vienna Univ. of Technology, Austria
(3) University of Potsdam, Germany
(4) Centre de la Recherche National (CNRS), Marseille, France

Current investigations point to a relationship between syntax and prosody. However, prosody can also be linked to emotional markers of an utterance. We tested the later option with event-related brain potentials (ERPs) showing more electrophysiological negativity for utterances with neutral emotional states than for happiness and cold anger. In addition, the material was analyzed using an estimation of the harmonics-to-noise ratio (HNR), a measure for spectral flatness as well as the maximum prediction gain for a speech production model computed by the mutual information (MI) function. The results indicate that the HNR estimation correlates with accentuation, depending on the position of the vowel, whereas a low maximum prediction gain indicates positive or negative emotional state of the speaker in comparison to the neutral state. Comparing ERPs and the acoustic data, a relationship between the maximum prediction gain and the perception of emotions can be established.

Full Paper

Bibliographic reference.  Alter, Kai / Rank, Erhard / Kotz, Sonja A. / Toepel, Ulrike / Besson, Mireille / Schirmer, Annett / Friederici, Angela D. (2000): "Accentuation and emotions - two different systems?", In SpeechEmotion-2000, 138-142.