Correlations between vocal tract parameters and body heights in adult humans
CAO Honglin1,2,3, KONG Jiangping3
1. Collaborative Innovation Center of Judicial Civilization, Beijing 100088, China;
2. Key Laboratory of Evidence Science of Ministry of Education, China University of Political Science and Law, Beijing 100088, China;
3. Department of Chinese Language and Literature, Peking University, Beijing 100871, China
Abstract:The relationship between the adult speaker's vocal tract (VT) and their height was assessed using acoustic reflections to measure the VT morphometric data of 109 male subjects and 105 female subjects, aged 19-30 years. The heights were correlated with eight VT parameters, including VT length, volume and proportions. Significant gender differences for all eight VT parameters were found with the VTs of males being longer and larger than those of females. The pharynxes of males are relatively longer and larger parts of the oral cavity. Some gender differences were also found for correlations between the VT parameters and height. Specifically, both genders had significant positive correlations between the pharyngeal length, pharyngeal volume, VT length, VT volume and height with the correlations for females generally stronger than those for males. Only the female subjects' VT lengths showed moderate correlations with height, while all of the other correlations are quite weak. These findings provide theoretical support for estimating an unknown speaker's height based on their voice in forensic phonetics.
曹洪林, 孔江平. 成年人声道参数与身高的相关性[J]. 清华大学学报(自然科学版), 2016, 56(11): 1184-1189,1195.
CAO Honglin, KONG Jiangping. Correlations between vocal tract parameters and body heights in adult humans. Journal of Tsinghua University(Science and Technology), 2016, 56(11): 1184-1189,1195.
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