Emotions and Speech Temporal Structure
Emotions and Speech Temporal Structure

Summary/Abstract: The focus of the article is on whether emotions could be traced in the temporal structure of Estonian speech. There are two research questions, namely, (a) Do emotions affect speech rate? and (b) What detectable traces, if any, might emotions generate in word prosody? To answer question (a), the articulation rate of emotional utterances was measured and the results were compared with those on neutral speech. The difference revealed was statistically significant. To answer question (b), the relations between emotions and the temporal characteristics of words with a vowel-centered structure were investigated. Sound durations were measured, various duration ratios were computed and various combinations of the characteristics where subjected to statistical analysis. The results revealed a certain difference between the temporal characteristics of Q2 and Q3 feet, and a loss of the difference between the second and third quantity degrees in sad speech.

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