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Voicing of selected consonants in whispered Czech
Svatošová, Michaela ; Bořil, Tomáš (advisor) ; Šturm, Pavel (referee)
Czech is one of the languages in which the phonological contrast of voicing is primarily realized by the presence or absence of the fundamental frequency. In whisper, however, the vocal folds do not vibrate, therefore voicing is absent. Despite that, in certain situations people do communicate successfully using whispered speech. Research on a range of languages has shown that listeners are able to discriminate voicing pairs in whisper even in isolated words or syllables which have no meaning, that is, on the basis of acoustic cues alone. The aim of this thesis was to verify these findings for Czech and to gain a better understanding of the acoustic features that contribute to the intelligibility of whisper. I have analysed recordings of the voicing pairs of Czech plosives and fricatives embedded in modal and whispered nonsense words. Of the various parameters measured, voicing counterparts differed most prominently in duration, although to a lesser extent than in modal phonation, suggesting weaker pre- servation of an otherwise redundant feature. In addition, the perception test confirmed a very good recognition of phonological voicing in whisper, but with substantial variability between individual voicing pairs. Furthermore, the combi- nation of the acoustic and perceptual perspective provided an...
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