Production, perception and cognitive aspects in the speech and singing intersection

• Grant number: 15/06283-0
• Support Opportunities: Regular Research Grants
• Start date: November 01, 2015
• End date: April 30, 2018
• Field of knowledge: Linguistics, Literature and Arts - Linguistics
• Principal Investigator: Beatriz Raposo de Medeiros
• Grantee: Beatriz Raposo de Medeiros
• Host Institution: Faculdade de Filosofia, Letras e Ciências Humanas (FFLCH). Universidade de São Paulo (USP). São Paulo , SP, Brazil
• Associated researchers: Alexsandro Rodrigues Meireles ; João Paulo Serrasqueiro Robalo Cabral

Abstract

The issue raised in this project is that although we know how to intuitively distinguish between speech and singing, there are portions of each in which one perceives the coexistence of both and this suggests that there is a gradation, more than an abrupt change in the production of speech and other aspects of speech. The aim of this research project is to focus on some aspects of production and perception of speech and song in order to answer the first question originated by the proposed issue: (1) Are speech and singing completely different phenomena? Therefore, three studies are proposed. The first study will measure duration and fundamental frequency excerpts of the same spoken and sung text. The second study, using the excerpts of the first will be a perception test which aim is to designate the presented stimulus as speaking or singing, with at least two possible gradations between these two designations. The third study will run a neural network whose inputs will be duration and fundamental frequency (F0) extracted from the analyzed excerpts to check if the output establishes more or less categorical differences between singing and speech. The results of the neural network will be compared with those of the first two studies. From this it will be done-one discussion taking into account cognitive aspects of speech and song. Expected results are that speech can be distinct from singing in terms of no stability or stability of observed acoustic aspects. For example, considering the same time window, speech should present more variation of F0 than singing, and this is just one aspect to objectively differentiate the two sound categories. (AU)

Scientific publications

(References retrieved automatically from Web of Science and SciELO through information on FAPESP grants and their corresponding numbers as mentioned in the publications by the authors)

MEDEIROS, BEATRIZ RAPOSO DE; CABRAL, JOAO PAULO; MEIRELES, ALEXSANDRO R.; BACETI, ANDRE A.. A comparative study of fundamental frequency stability between speech and singing. SPEECH COMMUNICATION, v. 128, p. 15-23, APR 2021. (15/06283-0)

MEIRELES, ALEXSANDRO R.; SIMOES, ANTONIO R. M.; RIBEIRO, ANTONIO CELSO; DE MEDEIROS, BEATRIZ RAPOSO; INT SPEECH COMMUN ASSOC. Musical Speech: a New Methodology for Transcribing Speech Prosody. 18TH ANNUAL CONFERENCE OF THE INTERNATIONAL SPEECH COMMUNICATION ASSOCIATION (INTERSPEECH 2017), VOLS 1-6, v. N/A, p. 5-pg., 2017-01-01. (15/06283-0)