Voice Auditory Feedback On Speech Voice

Since Noam Chomsky introduced the Generative Linguistics, the exploration into the abstract faculty of language (FL) has become one of the key objects in linguistic studies. And the faculty of auditory feedback serves as one of the FL's integrated components. According to the findings in functional neural imaging study, the feedback in question plays an important role in speech production.The traditional experimental phonetics is classified into three branches: articulatory phonetics, acoustic phonetics and auditory phonetics. The present study is not restricted to any one branch of the above. It aims to explore the effect of the speaker's speech perception on his/her speech production, and to be more exact, the effect of auditory feedback on speech production. We are inclined to accept the importance of the auditory feedback system in normal fluent speech; however, it is very hard to observe how the system works in practice conspicuously. TAF (Transformed Auditory Feedback) experiment is such a study as designed to examine the corresponding role of auditory feedback on normal speech production by means of disturbing and changing the normal auditory feedback signal. In the past, less attention has been paid to the auditory feedback study especially regarding the comparative study between Chinese and Japanese, and relatively few achievements have been made as a result.In terms of language typology, Chinese and Japanese belong to different type of language. Their comparison shows that pitch variation which though helps in distinguishing word meaning in the two languages does not work in the same fashion. In Chinese, its occurrence is very common and found within a syllable whereas in Japanese its occurrence is not only restricted but also between syllables. The present study concerns the following issues: What phonetic (common and special) features may be found between participants from different language backgrounds under various transformed auditory feedback conditions? What unique properties may distinguish Chinese speech production from Japanese speech production? The previous studies especially in Lombard conditions demonstrated that Chinese is relatively more convenient to be transmitted in noisy environments because of its specific pitch variations. Then in the same environment, what change will be found in their speed, pitch variation and amplitude when Chinese and Japanese participants read different materials?Compared with what has been done before, the present study has made innovations in its proposal, material selection and experiment design, In the proposal, the comparison is made between the two types of languages to find the universality and specificity of humans' auditory feedback competence. In experimental stimuli, our reading materials are not confined to words, instead we select natural sentences' from the well-known book of Harry Potter. Moreover, based on the linguistic analysis the multi-category language materials are well-chosen for the purpose of examining the features in auditory feedback competence. In methodology, we adopt the modulated frequency (F0) in sine-wave manner other than in a linear way as used in previous experiments.Three experimental paradigms on auditory feedback studies are formulated according to the different feedback sound stimuli exposed to the participants. They are DAF (delayed auditory feedback), FAF (frequency-altered feedback) and Lombard experiment. The following conclusions are drawn from the findings in our experiments covering the above paradigms.1. FAF can lead to speech dysfluency just like DAF does. Under noisy conditions, the speech dysfluency of the participant is not significant. The speech dysfluency is indicated by slowdown of speech speed as well as pitch change.2. During speech production, the neurosystem may dominate pitch, speed and amplitude independently, which in turn shows different neuropsychological mechanism accordingly.3. FAF affects participants' pitch variation in different degree. Pitch variation of Chinese participants is more obvious and much stronger. It is proposed that the auditory feedback system of Chinese speakers is more sensitive in online control of pitch change.4. Both semantics and context have a significant effect on the change of amplitude and pitch under normal or noisy conditions.5. The subjects of different language types show universality and specificity in their auditory feedback competence.6. The mutual operation of online speech control and long-term calibration function coming from auditory feedback has a significant effect on the language acquisition. IDS (Infant-directed Speech) and the speech under the condition of TAF (Transformed Auditory Feedback) are quite similar in the adjustment of pitch, amplitude and speed.The present study could make contributions to linguistic theory, clinical application and NLP (Natural Language Processing). Theoretically, the parametric alteration of speech articulation under different feedback conditions may contribute to child language acquisition, adult foreign language learning and the study of neuropsychological mechanism related to language. Clinically, the research of FAF offers direct guidance on treatment of stutterers. With regard to NLP, it is quite necessary to fully develop the researches of how auditory feedback affects speech production in order to make available human-machine exchange in natural voice. The research of within-personal communication as well as the interpersonal conversationis indispensable to the human-machine communication.