Maassen B, Povel D J
J Acoust Soc Am. 1985 Sep;78(3):877-86. doi: 10.1121/1.392918.
Three experiments were conducted to study the effect of segmental and suprasegmental corrections on the intelligibility and judged quality of deaf speech. By means of digital signal processing techniques, including LPC analysis, transformations of separate speech sounds, temporal structure, and intonation were carried out on 30 Dutch sentences spoken by ten deaf children. The transformed sentences were tested for intelligibility and acceptability by presenting them to inexperienced listeners. In experiment 1, LPC based reflection coefficients describing segmental characteristics of deaf speakers were replaced by those of hearing speakers. A complete segmental correction caused a dramatic increase in intelligibility from 24% to 72%, which, for a major part, was due to correction of vowels. Experiment 2 revealed that correction of temporal structure and intonation caused only a small improvement from 24% to about 34%. Combination of segmental and suprasegmental corrections yielded almost perfectly understandable sentences, due to a more than additive effect of the two corrections. Quality judgments, collected in experiment 3, were in close agreement with the intelligibility measures. The results show that, in order for these speakers to become more intelligible, improving their articulation is more important than improving their production of temporal structure and intonation.
进行了三项实验，以研究分段和超分段校正对聋人语音清晰度和评判质量的影响。借助数字信号处理技术，包括线性预测编码（LPC）分析，对十名聋童说出的30个荷兰语句子的各个语音、时间结构和语调进行了变换。通过将变换后的句子呈现给没有经验的听众来测试其清晰度和可接受性。在实验1中，用听力正常者的基于LPC的反射系数替换了描述聋人说话者分段特征的反射系数。完全的分段校正使清晰度从24%大幅提高到72%，这在很大程度上归因于元音的校正。实验2表明，时间结构和语调的校正仅使清晰度从24%略有提高到约34%。由于两种校正的叠加效应，分段和超分段校正相结合产生了几乎完全可理解的句子。在实验3中收集的质量评判与清晰度测量结果密切一致。结果表明，为了使这些说话者的语音更清晰，改善他们的发音比改善他们的时间结构和语调的生成更重要。
