The Lancaster University Phonetics Lab and FORGE are delighted to announce a joint talk by our upcoming internal speaker: Dr Ricky Chan (Linguistics & English Language). Details of his talk are below:

TITLE
Tone coarticulation and implications for forensic speaker comparison

ABSTRACT
A major goal in forensic speaker comparison research is to identify variables in speech that are useful for characterising speakers. While research on individual phonetic parameters abound, few studies have focused on the between-speaker differences in sounds under the influence from connected speech processes, let alone with an explicit comparison with sounds produced in their citation forms. In this talk, I will report an experiment on the speaker-discriminatory powers of lexical tones under different speaking rate and tonal contexts, which are two main factors contributing to tone coarticulation. 20 native Cantonese speakers and 20 native Mandarin speakers were recruited and read speech in two speaking rates (normal vs. fast) and two tonal contexts (compatible vs. conflicting) were elicited. Results based on discriminant analysis show that coarticulated tones tend to perform worse in speaker identification than tones in their citation forms. Implications for forensic speaker comparison will be discussed.

TIME & PLACE
1200-1300, Mon 21^st Nov, County South C89

All are welcome to attend.