Carla Wikse Barrow is a PhD student in phonetics. She is also a certified speech-language pathologist. On the 30th of March, she will present her ongoing work in a halftime seminar.

Abstract

Descriptions of the acoustic characteristics of Swedish voiceless fricatives are scarce, and are limited to static measures derived from the speech of a small number of speakers. During my talk I will summarize my PhD work thus far and present the results of the first study of my thesis. The study provides an updated acoustic description of the static (spectral, temporal and intensity) characteristics of voiceless fricatives in Central Standard Swedish. In addition, spectro-temporal variation across the fricative duration is modelled using a General Additive Mixed Model (GAMM). Results show that fricatives are differentiated in terms spectral properties, duration and intensity level. Dynamic analyses reveal differences in curvature as well as overall level of spectral centre of gravity across the duration of the fricative, associated with place of articulation and mediated by vowel context, fricative duration and speaker specific patterns.