Analysis of Spectral Characteristics of Ukrainian and Several European Languages
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Abstract
A number of scientific, technical, medical and linguistic tasks require the establishment of an acoustic affinity or a peculiarity of the Ukrainian language in comparison with European languages. Today these issues are not thoroughly investigated.
The objective parameters of the speech process as a random signal are not given sufficient attention. And understanding the processes of how the brain receives information can be obtained by analyzing the relationship of the acoustic characteristics of the signal with its phonetic parameters.
The most objective acoustic characteristic of a language is its integral characteristic, namely the averaged spectral density of the speech signal power. The first assessment of this characteristic for the Ukrainian language was made by the authors in previous work.
The purpose of the article is to study the averaged spectra of languages of the Indo-European family, namely, Russian, Polish, Italian and English, as well as to compare them with the corresponding spectral characteristics of the Ukrainian language.
Audiobook audio recordings from the electronic resources indicated in the text were used for the research. The analysis was performed for two styles of language: artistic and nonfiction, followed by averaging the results.
To find the average power density spectrum of speech signals, their processing was performed in the MATLAB® software environment.
The duration of the studied records was 2 minutes. 30 s. ± 5 s. The tested frequency range is selected from 100 Hz to 20 kHz.
The results obtained are presented in the form of graphical representations of the spectral characteristics of linguistic signals averaged over styles in comparison with the Ukrainian language.
The basic regularities of the spectrum of the Ukrainian language are analyzed. The high level of spectral components of the low-frequency range is characteristic, which indicates the thoracic nature of the loud sounds. Some decrease in the level of the spectrum of the Ukrainian language in the midrange indicates a lower representation of ringing consonants and, in general, no emphasizing of consonant sounds. The high frequency formant with a maximum in the region of 4 kHz, which can be called a "singing formant", is essential. At higher frequencies there is a significant decrease in the level of the spectrum, which indicates the absence of whistles and whispers in the Ukrainian language. The results obtained are in line with the main conclusions of linguists who distinguish the particular sweetness of the Ukrainian language compared to Russian
A comparison of the spectra of Ukrainian and Polish obvious that they are sufficiently similar to the frequency of about 1.5 kHz. At higher frequencies in Polish the presence of clanging and rustling sounds, while in the Ukrainian language appears "singing formant" and there is a sharp decline in the levels of spectral components.
The level of components of the spectrum of the Italian language is much lower than in the Ukrainian, in the frequency range 100-1500 Hz. Italian has powerful high-frequency spectral components, with its high-frequency formants also occur in the region of 4 kHz, but a more significant rise in frequency response is observed within 7-9 kHz.
There is a significant similarity between the English and Ukrainian spectra at almost the frequency of 1800 Hz. Further up to 8 kHz, while the level of high-frequency components is maintained in English, a “singing” formant is formed in the Ukrainian language. After 8 kHz, the spectra fall almost equally, unlike the other languages considered.
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