A forensic phonetic investigation into the speech patterns of identical and non-identical twins

Abstract

Three pairs of similar-sounding twin pairs are analysed from a forensic phonetic perspective. The questions ‘does each person in the population have a measurably unique voice?’ (re. Nolan & Oh 1996:39) and can perceptually similar voices be adequately distinguished (re. Rose e.g. 1996, 1999a, 1999b)? are answered positively. The results cannot disprove the assertion that each person in the population has a measurably unique voice, and show that these closely related similar-sounding speakers can be distinguished phonetically (by analysis of F4 in most vowels and particular aspects of consonant production).