An Acoustic Study of Emotivity-Prosody Interface in Persian Speech Using the Tilt Model

Abstract

This paper aims to explore some acoustic properties (i.e. duration and pitch amplitude of speech) associated with three different emotions: anger, sadness and joy against neutrality as a reference point, all being intentionally expressed by six Persian speakers. The primary purpose of this study is to find out if there is any correspondence between the given emotions and prosody patterning in Persian. Such a study considers articulation and perception in the context of spoken communication. For this purpose, the Tilt Model (Taylor 1998, 2000 and 2009) is used to describe the detailed acoustic knowledge of how an utterance is modulated when a Persian speaker's emotion deviates from neutral to certain emotional and attitudinal states. The results of our statistical analysis indicate that there exists a rather strict acoustic correlation between sadness and neutrality on the one hand, and between anger and joy, on the other. The noticeable acoustic feature which changes as a function of emotion is pitch amplitude, while duration is involved to a lesser degree.