Intensity of Estonian Emotional Speech

摘要

Currently the Estonian Emotional Speech Corpus is investigated for the distinctive acoustic parameters of three emotions - anger, joy and sadness - and neutral speech, with a view to recognizable synthesis of emotions in Estonian speech. This article is focused on intensity as one of the parameters vital for emotion synthesis. The research question is whether the intensity of Estonian read speech is in any way affected by emotions. The Estonian Emotional Speech Corpus was used as the acoustic basis of the study. The intensity analysis comprised calculations of the means and ranges of the intensities of emotional and neutral speech. In addition, pairwise studies were applied to find out whether intensity differs across emotions and in comparison with neutral speech in utterance-initial and utterance-final positions. The results revealed that mean intensities make a significant difference between concrete emotions as well as in comparison with neutral speech. The highest intensity was measured in neutral speech and the lowest in the utterances of sadness. Intensity ranges, however, were not significantly different between the utterance groups analysed. Intensity at the beginning and end of utterance was also the highest in neutral speech and the lowest with sadness. Those two groups displayed the only statistically significant differences between the intensities of utterance beginnings as well as ends.