METHODOLOGY FOR ACOUSTIC RECORDING Cover Image

METODOLOGIJA AKUSTIČKIH SNIMANJA
METHODOLOGY FOR ACOUSTIC RECORDING

Author(s): Iva Bašić, Zdravka Biočina
Subject(s): Phonetics / Phonology, Sociolinguistics
Published by: Filozofski fakultet, Sveučilište u Splitu
Keywords: sociolinguistics; acoustic recording; methodology; fundamental frequency; formant frequencies;

Summary/Abstract: Sociolinguistics and sociophonetics place the native speaker in the center of their research. Since different research goals demand a different methodological setting it is very important to assess which steps are necessary and sufficient to answer the research questions. Thus the authors of this paper recorded more than 300speakers, which gave them ample methodological experience but also opened a lot of questions. In many previous studies, the importance of the optimal conditions of recording which contribute to a spontaneous spoken reaction of the speaker is emphasised, especially for the purpose of collecting audio material of dialect speech.The influences of different speaking styles, microphone distance (Vermeulen 2009;Fraser 2017) and head position (Jovičić et al. 2015) on acoustical parameters in English, Dutch, Serbian, etc. ware examined in a smaller number of acoustic studies.This paper will look into conditions of acoustic recording and their influence on different acoustic parameters (formant frequencies and fundamental frequency). For the purposes of this research two speakers (one male and one female voice)with a healthy voice and speech and language development were recorded. In the first part of the research, the speakers read a short text, while in the second part spontaneous speech was recorded. Both speakers were recorded in the morning and in the afternoon in two different settings: in a sound booth and in a room with a lower noise level, both with a high-quality recorder. The speakers were also recorded at a different distance from the microphone and with different head positions.Three research questions were formulated: will different a) terms of recording b)conditions of recording and c) distance and head position relative to the microphone influence the values of formant frequencies and the fundamental frequency? Apart from that, this paper will emphasize the methodological details that should be taken into consideration while collecting audio material for acoustic analysis purposes.From the fundamental frequency measurements, the basic value and median have been shown to be the most robust, and from the formant frequencies. the third formant. The most significant differences between values are in the non-optimal distance of the speaker from the microphone. This research aims to contribute to the clarification of specific acoustic issues and to facilitate future researchers to set up the necessary methodological settings in sociolinguistic, sociophonetic and phonetic forensic studies due to their undoubted influence on data analysis and results.

  • Issue Year: 2020
  • Issue No: 13
  • Page Range: 19-40
  • Page Count: 22
  • Language: Croatian