Fundamental frequency statistics for male speakers of Common Czech

Abstract

In speaker identification, a forensic phonetician’s task often involves comparingvoices of two or more speakers and assessing their similarity, but also their typicality. For the latter, it is necessary to have background information about the relevant speaker population. This paper introduces the database of Common Czech which was compiled as a reference database, and presents the first set of compiled statistics pertaining to fundamental frequency (F0). The population statistics are computed from a reading task and spontaneous speech. The results confirm the superiority of F0 baseline over mean or median values when assessing typicality and demonstrate, in many speakers, a narrower intonation range in spontaneous speech than in reading. The role of F0 in speaker comparison is also discussed.

Keywords

• fundamental frequency
• forensic phonetics
• speaker identification
• Czech