Perceptual level of intonation in whispered voice

Abstract

In this paper, I propose to analyze the prosodic realization of two modalities (declarative and interrogative) through perception study of whispered voice in French. I present results of two modality identification tasks. Results of identification test based on natural stimuli show a good identification rate of the modality. The values of the duration of final syllable seem to be the main acoustic cue that is relevant in the identification of modality. I present also the results of modality identification task based on re-synthesized stimuli allowing to control the role played by duration parameter. Results of this second experiment show modality identification depends on perceptual level of the duration.