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Use of glottalization as a factor enabling speaker identification
Skákal, Ladislav ; Skarnitzl, Radek (advisor) ; Bořil, Tomáš (referee)
While handling the task of speaker identification, forensic phoneticians use a combination of various parameters contained in different levels of speech signal. The main aim of the present thesis is to explore whether glottalization in Czech may be considered as a potentially useful parameter in this sense. In our research, we focus on the rate of prevocalic glottalization at word boundaries and we distinguish between different realisations of glottalization: canonical glottal stop and its hypoarticulated form - creaky voice. The studied material consists of repeated recordings of three male and four female speakers and contains both read text and spontaneous speech. The results do not indicate that the same speaker would use glottalization differently in the first and second recording, but a difference in glottalization is found between speakers. From the forensic phonetics point of view, this finding seems to be useful. Marginally, some other factors which are not directly connected with the speaker (height of following vowel, lexical factors and speech rate) were examined, but no influence on glottalization was found. Keywords: glottal stop, glottalization, forensic phonetics, speaker identification
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Ways of exploiting fundamental frequency for speaker identification
Hývlová, Dita ; Skarnitzl, Radek (advisor) ; Šturm, Pavel (referee)
The present Master's thesis deals with the forensic use of fundamental frequency characteristics, specifically with F0 mean values and indicators of variability. Phoneticians who specialise in the forensic analysis of speech generally believe that F0 does not hold much potential as a parameter useful for speaker identification, mainly because it is easily influenced by extrinsic factors (e.g. the speaker's emotional state, interfering noise, transmission channel or even the speaker's own effort to mask his voice), which cause high intra-individual variability. Despite these facts, however, the forensic use of F0 offers a number of advantages, namely straightforward extraction from the speech signal and lower susceptibility to varying lexical content - unlike, for example, vowel formants. This thesis investigates the recordings of 8 male speakers made in two different speech styles (spontaneous and read) and compares the respective indicators of F0 stability and variability, in particular those that are robust in varying external conditions: that is, the baseline for mean values and the 10.-90. percentile range for variability indicators. Apart from that, we take into account phenomena such as the creaky voice, which are idiosyncratic and contribute to easier speaker discrimination. Key words:...
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Phonetic manifestations of voice disguise
Růžičková, Alžběta ; Skarnitzl, Radek (advisor) ; Šturm, Pavel (referee)
In forensic practice, when there is the need to identify a speaker using a recording of his speech, forensic voice identification is applied. If the perpetrator is aware of the option of their speech being recorded, for instance in cases such as abduction or blackmail, they can attempt voice disguise in order to thwart voice identification process. This thesis surveys strategies used by Czech speakers, when they attempt to disguise their voices using any means of their choice. Auditory analysis of 80 speakers' disguised voices was performed. 15 of them, who used more complex strategies for disguising their voices, acoustic analysis of fundamental frequency, formant values and speech and articulatory rate was performed. For those speakers, perceptual tests were carried out, to examine the degree of difficulty in uncovering modifications of one's speech and the effect of the used disguise strategies on speaker identifiability in a voice line-up.
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Use of glottalization as a factor enabling speaker identification
Skákal, Ladislav ; Skarnitzl, Radek (advisor) ; Bořil, Tomáš (referee)
While handling the task of speaker identification, forensic phoneticians use a combination of various parameters contained in different levels of speech signal. The main aim of the present thesis is to explore whether glottalization in Czech may be considered as a potentially useful parameter in this sense. In our research, we focus on the rate of prevocalic glottalization at word boundaries and we distinguish between different realisations of glottalization: canonical glottal stop and its hypoarticulated form - creaky voice. The studied material consists of repeated recordings of three male and four female speakers and contains both read text and spontaneous speech. The results do not indicate that the same speaker would use glottalization differently in the first and second recording, but a difference in glottalization is found between speakers. From the forensic phonetics point of view, this finding seems to be useful. Marginally, some other factors which are not directly connected with the speaker (height of following vowel, lexical factors and speech rate) were examined, but no influence on glottalization was found. Keywords: glottal stop, glottalization, forensic phonetics, speaker identification
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Using long-term formant distributions for speaker identification in various acoustic conditions
Lazárková, Dita ; Skarnitzl, Radek (advisor) ; Bořil, Tomáš (referee)
The analysis of long-time formant distribution is relatively young but promising discipline of speaker identification. It is a method of mapping the long-term behavior of formants in speech of individual speakers. Frequently encountered problems in practice are bad acoustic quality and very short duration of analyzed recordings. This work aims to present the historical development of forensic phonetics and currently used methods. In the practical part, it deals with the usability of LTF method in forensic practice, especially in recordings containing background noise. It was shown that the noise appreciably affects extracted LTF values and unfortunately the change is not systematic. Therefore, we proposed several methods to compensate the noise in recordings, in order to be able to compare recordings with and without noise. We also investigated the minimum duration of recording, which is necessary for statistical reliability of the resulting values. This boundary is not exact and for each speaker, it is substantially individual. But it is apparent that recordings (vocalic streams) shorter than 15 s often provide incomplete information, wherefore they cannot be recommended for analysis. Keywords: LTF, long-time formant distribution, speaker identification, forensic phonetics, acoustic quality of...
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Speaker identification in the temporal domain of speech
Weingartová, Lenka ; Volín, Jan (advisor) ; Skarnitzl, Radek (referee) ; Pollák, Petr (referee)
This thesis aims to thoroughly describe the temporal characteristics of spoken Czech by means of phone durations and their changes under the influence of several prosodic and segmental factors, such as position in a higher unit (syllable, word or prosodic phrase), length of the higher unit, segmental environment, structure of the syllable or phrase-final lengthening. The speech material comes from a semi-spontaneous corpus of scripted dialogues comprising 4046 utterances by 34 speakers. The descriptions are afterwards used for the creation of a rule-based temporal model, which provides a baseline for analysing local articulation rate contours and their speaker-specificity. The results indicate, that systematic speaker-specific differences can be found in the segmental domain, as well as in the temporal contours. Moreover, speaker identification potential of articulation rate and global temporal features is also assessed. Keywords: temporal characteristics, temporal modelling, phone duration, speaker identification, Czech
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The effect of education on the ability to disguise one's voice
Vyhnálková, Lenka ; Skarnitzl, Radek (advisor) ; Machač, Pavel (referee)
(in English): Voice disguise can potentially occur in every utterance that is associated with any criminal case. In order to identify the perpetrator it is necessary to analyze the speech and understand how the different types of voice disguise can affect the speaker's voice qualities. This thesis focuses on the ability of voice disguise, portraying three groups of speakers in relation to their educational background. The aim of this work is to determine the strategies adopted by the speaker to conceal his/her identity and furthermore it poses the question whether differences among the three groups of speakers, their choice of strategy and its inherent success can be found. The basis for this research stems from 86 recordings which were undertaken in Pilsen and Prague with 43 young people aged 20 to 31. Two read utterances, one undisguised and the other freely disguised, were obtained from each of the participants and were compared with each other. The results show that the preferred forms of voice disguise appeared to involve changes in phonation - especially decrease or increase of fundamental frequency of the speaker's voice. Among the three groups of speakers, their choice and the success of the chosen strategy only minor differences could be found, yet for a final confirmation of this...
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Spectral properties of the source signal as speaker-specific cues
Vaňková, Jitka ; Skarnitzl, Radek (advisor) ; Volín, Jan (referee)
Despite a continuous development in computer sciences and related disciplines, speaker identification remains one of the most challenging tasks in forensic phonetics. The reason for this is the fact that our knowledge of how identity is reflected in the acoustic signal is still limited. The present study aims to contribute to the search of speaker-specific cues by examining spectral properties of the source signal. Specifically, it examines to what extent three short-term measures of spectral tilt, namely H1-H2, H1-A1 and H1-A3, can discriminate 16 Czech female speakers. It also addresses the influence of vowel quality, syllable status with respect to stress and position of stress group in the utterance on the values of these measures. The results show that these parameters do have some discriminative power, though the contribution of individual parameters differs. The study indicates that discrimination of speakers is the most successful in stressed syllables and argues that individual vowels could differ in their usefulness for speaker identification. The results of LDA based on these short- term measures of spectral tilt were complemented with long-term measures, namely alpha index, Kitzing index and Hammarberg index which quantify the slope of the LTAS. The present study suggests that...
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