ACOUSTIC ANALYSIS OF PITCH ACCENT AS A REGIONAL FORENSIC MARKER IN SERBIAN

The current research compares the acoustic correlates of pitch accent of two urban dialects of spoken Serbian, urban Niš and Novi Sad. We analyzed spontaneous speech of nineteen native speakers of Serbian with regard to vowel duration and fundamental frequency ratios. It was shown that the tone between the stressed and post-stressed vowel is generally falling in the speech of Niš, while in the speech of Novi Sad it reflects the tone of the expected pitch accent in that particular word. The same is true of the interval between the end of the stressed and the beginning of the post-stressed vowel, which is always rising in the speech of Niš. In Niš, speakers tend to produce vowels in words with falling accents as longer than in words with rising accents. On average, vowels are longer in the speech of Novi Sad. Bearing in mind that regional variations provide important forensic markers (Kašić and Đorđević 2009), this research aims to contribute to the discipline of forensic phonetics, in particular to speaker profiling. Its significance also lies in the fact that it examines spontaneous speech, and is thus relevant for forensic casework (Rose 2002; Nolan, de Jong, and McDougall 2006).

Detecting the Risk of Online Harms on People With Social Orientation Impairments

This chapter proposes automated screening of internet and multimedia communications through a combination of neuroeconomics to measure neuro-response plasticity through forensic phonetics, EEG monitoring, and EigenFaces. These measure neuro-response plasticity through facial differences, including through the eyes, differences in EEG pattern, and prosody in the form of tone of voice. Through describing the ‘Distress in the Mind Test', a computer program is proposed that can be implemented on any device with a camera and microphone and can therefore also be used to diagnose social orientation impariments, such as autism and social phobia. Further development would prevent people with social orientation impairments or whom are otherwise at risk from online harms being exposed to them through automated content filtering.

Data in Forensic Phonetics from theory to practice

What are speech data? The question is not as trivial as it may seem: every day both theoretical and applied linguistic research come up against problems deriving from bad data management. This topic is particularly thorny in interdisciplinary approaches such as the speech forensics analysis, whereby the recorded speech can be exploited as legal clues, with important repercussions on public security and citizens’ rights. The datum does not exist in nature, being it a consequence of the human analysis of a given phenomenon. In fact, data extraction is based on explicit and implicit theories implemented by the researcher within the application of specific frameworks. Researchers and professionals working on empiric data should be more aware of these underlined processes in order to avoid data misuse and, indeed, maximize results. In this paper, we will briefly address the issue of the speech data epistemology with a particular focus on the interdisciplinary required in forensics among linguistics and engineering, by discussing examples from Italian real cases. The analysis of speech for forensic purposes requires a strong interdisciplinary approach, especially for what it concerns collection, classification, treatment of acoustic data, and their following transcription and analysis. Moreover, it must be clarified what different experts (e.g., lawyers vs. linguists) mean as “datum”.

FORENZIČKO UTVRĐIVANjE IDENTITETA NA OSNOVU GLASA

This paper analyzes the significance of the application of forensic phonetics in investigative and judicial processes, i.e. the application of the language knowledge in order to solve various criminal actions and litigations. The aim is to determine, based on the available literature in which manner and extent the forensic practice of identity recognition based on voice is represented in the judiciary. The basic frames of forensic expert analysis in the field of determining the person based on voice are presented. The concept of identity in criminalistics is indicated, as well as the evidential value of the results of the expert analysis in the speaker’s recognition. The final results of the forensic expert analysis, expressed in a scale of ranged probabilities, are considered. Requirement and possibility of using the voice in various types and stages of police procedures, criminal investigation or criminal proceedings are indicated

Linguistic Personology – Potential in Phonoscopic Expertise

The study attempts to justify the development of linguistic personology in Bulgaria as an interdisciplinary scientific paradigm, which comprises theoretical foundations of psycholinguistics, sociolinguistics, anthropological linguistics, linguistic pragmatics, semiotics and phonоstylistics. The applied aspect of the approach consists in describing speaker's physiognomic expressions and speech markers, and their anthropological characteristics, which enable researchers to present a speech profile of the respective person through two parameters: their personal identity and personal voice with its unique inherent features. Linguistic personology through speech as an autonomous interdisciplinary research paradigm, serves in forensic (phonoscopic) expertise for the speakers' characteristics diagnostics, considering typical voice peculiarities. The approach studies speaker's verbal behaviour and distinctive features of his or her personal identity signaled by personal voice expression measured through linguistic (phonoscopic) expertise. Linguistic personology through speech is a unique method of personality typization as well as characterizing the speaker based on the analysis of his / her specific pronunciation and voice transformation, used in the field of forensic phonetics. It is proposed to supplement the expert assessment with the results of acoustic analysis of voice samples, as well as their perception, for more objective identification of matching linguistic data. The article represents speech excerpts, the acoustic images of which demonstrate audio-and-visual comprehension of gender differentiation of speakers, whose voices indicate that the recipients belong to the diagnosed group of men, women or transvestites.

The use of the Vocal Profile Analysis for speaker characterization: Methodological proposals

Among phoneticians, the Vocal Profile Analysis (VPA) is one of the most widely used methods for the componential assessment of voice quality. Whether the ultimate goal of the VPA evaluation is the comparative description of languages or the characterization of an individual speaker, the VPA protocol shows great potential for different research areas of speech communication. However, its use is not without practical difficulties. Despite these, methodological studies aimed at explaining where, when and why issues arise during the perceptual assessment process are rare. In this paper we describe the methodological stages through which three analysts evaluated the voices of 99 Standard Southern British English male speakers, rated their voices using the VPA scheme, discussed inter-rater disagreements, and eventually produced an agreed version of VPA scores. These scores were then used to assess correlations between settings. We show that it is possible to reach a good degree of inter-rater agreement, provided that several calibration and training sessions are conducted. We further conclude that the perceptual assessment of voice quality using the VPA scheme is an essential tool in fields such as forensic phonetics but, foremost, that it can be adapted and modified to a range of research areas, and not necessarily limited to the evaluation of pathological voices in clinical settings.