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15th International Congress of Phonetic Sciences (ICPhS-15)Barcelona, Spain |
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15th International Congress of Phonetic Sciences (ICPhS-15)Barcelona, Spain |
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To succeed with the voice imitation, the impersonator has to select
the perceptually significant features of the target speaker's voice
and speech behavior. Do different impersonators select the same features
of a specific target speaker? To try to answer this question, a comparative
study was done of phonetic features in voice imitations made by three
male Swedish impersonators imitating the same target voices. Auditory
and acoustic analyses were conducted of the imitators' natural voices,
nine target voices and 22 voice imitations. The results indicate that
the impersonators in this study have selected and try to imitate almost
the same characteristic features of the target speakers. Both auditory
impressions and acoustic measurements, indicate that it is possible
to get close to the voice and speech of the target speaker.
The
purpose of the study was to obtain an insight into centrally important
features of specifically impersonation, which may also give us a general
understanding of speaker identification.
Bibliographic reference. Zetterholm, Elisabeth (2003): "The same but different - three impersonators imitate the same target voices", In ICPhS-15, 2205-2208.