Acoustic characteristics of English fricatives

TLDR

No single metric has yet been found to classify fricative place of articulation with high accuracy. This study conducts a large‑scale comparative analysis of acoustic cues for classifying fricative place of articulation. The authors measured static spectral peak location, spectral moments, noise duration, normalized amplitude, F2 onset frequency, and dynamic relative amplitude and locus equations to compare fricative places. All cues except locus equations consistently distinguish sibilant from nonsibilant fricatives, and spectral peak location, spectral moments, normalized and relative amplitude differentiate all four places of articulation, showing that static and dynamic acoustic properties provide robust, unique information across speakers, vowel contexts, and voicing.

Abstract

This study constitutes a large-scale comparative analysis of acoustic cues for classification of place of articulation in fricatives. To date, no single metric has been found to classify fricative place of articulation with a high degree of accuracy. This study presents spectral, amplitudinal, and temporal measurements that involve both static properties (spectral peak location, spectral moments, noise duration, normalized amplitude, and F2 onset frequency) and dynamic properties (relative amplitude and locus equations). While all cues (except locus equations) consistently serve to distinguish sibilant from nonsibilant fricatives, the present results indicate that spectral peak location, spectral moments, and both normalized and relative amplitude serve to distinguish all four places of fricative articulation. These findings suggest that these static and dynamic acoustic properties can provide robust and unique information about all four places of articulation, despite variation in speaker, vowel context, and voicing.