A re-analysis of f0 in ethnic varieties of London English using REAPER

Abstract

Previous research has investigated voice quality in London English using acoustic measurements such as harmonic structure (H1-H2) and fundamental frequency (f0) in Praat [1], and found significant interactions with regard to voice quality and pitch across two ethnic groups [11]. However, Praat’s pitch tracker has been shown to be less than optimal when dealing with low fundamental frequencies. In this study we re-analyse the speech of the same 42 participants from [11] using REAPER: Robust Epoch And Pitch EstimatoR [12]. The REAPER speech processing system defines the local f0 as the inverse of the time between successive glottal closure instants, and has been demonstrated to return effective f0 measurements at low pitch ranges [4,6]. Our results differ somewhat from previously reported values by [11] and we suggest that this is due to REAPER’s more accurate f0 measurements within the creaky voice range [6].