engleski

The Long-Term Average Spectrum as a Measure of Voice Quality in L1 and L2 Speakers

It is supposed that general speaker´s voice quality characteristics are enclosed in long enough samples of speech and can be assessed by means of Long-Term Average Spectrum (LTAS). The paper investigates how the LTAS of Croatian speakers of English as a second language is influenced by the level of language proficiency in English. A group of 6 unproficient and 7 proficient speakers of English read an English prose passage and its Croatian translation five times in each language. The LTAS for each subject and each interpretation was obtained by means of computorized Average Spectrum (AS) program. The within-language and between-language LTAS dissimilarity and similarity indices for each group were calculated to assess the language.induced voice variability. ANOVA showed a higher degree of voice quality variability for proficient speakers and nonsignificant variability difference for both groups in two languages. The results also showed significantly higher degree of between-language than within-language variability for both groups.

voice quality; long-term average spectrum; foreign language; English; Croatian

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