ISCA Archive SpeechProsody 2006
ISCA Archive SpeechProsody 2006

Emotional prosody - does culture make a difference?

Felix Burkhardt, Nicolas Audibert, Lori Malatesta, Oytun Türk, Levent Arslan, Véronique Aubergé

We report on a multilingual comparison study on the effects of prosodic changes on emotional speech. The study was conducted in France, Germany, Greece and Turkey. Semantically identical sentences expressing emotional relevant content were translated into the target languages and were manipulated systematically with respect to pitch range, duration model, and jitter simulation. Perception experiments in the participating countries showed relevant effects irrespective of language. Nonetheless, some effects of language are also reported.