The Effect of Parabolic Intonation on Speech Intelligibility

Abstract

This research was the first, to our knowledge, to explore the effect of a simple parabolic pitch contour on speech intelligibility. The absence of improvement in intelligibility for speech in the parabolic intonation conditions suggests that this simple pitch pattern is not sufficient to provide the necessary cues for speech understanding. But, the results do indicate that this pitch pattern is sufficient to improve naturalness of speech.