14th International Congress of Phonetic Sciences (ICPhS-14)San Francisco, CA, USA |
Two harmonically related tones are perceived as a single
chord, but if one of them is periodically interrupted they are
heard as two separate sound sources. If a /ma/ syllable is
repeated the resulting sound consists of a continuous nasal
formant with a number of periodically interrupted higher
formants. Why is this utterance not perceived as two separate
sound sources?
Experiments have been performed to investigate this
question. An amplitude modulated tone was added to a
continuous tone. Two sources were heard if the stimulus
consisted of more than one cycle of amplitude modulation. It
was confirmed that repeated /ma/ syllables are perceived as a
single voice whereas repeated vowels added to a continuous
nasal are perceived as two voices. The signals were subjected
to linear prediction analysis then synthesised at the same
fundamental frequency. Perception tests showed that both of
these stimuli were heard as a single voice.
Bibliographic reference. Ainsworth, William / Meyer, Georg / Koreman, Jacques (1999): "Interrupted tones and repeated syllables", In ICPhS-14, 1819-1822.