Laughter is an important emotional expression in speech. The production is characterized simply by quasiperiodic glottal opening/closing gesture with relatively constant articulatory configuration. The acoustic consequence, however, is complicated and appears in the temporal characteristics of voiced‐unvoiced category and pitch, the spectral envelope, and the segmental duration. In this study, acoustic parameters that characterize laughter were investigated from acoustical and perceptual points of view. Laughter /hahaha/ was selected as a typical laughter from conversational speech recording and the acoustic characteristics were compared with those of normally uttered speech /hahaha/. The acoustic analysis was performed in terms of pitch in average and its intrasegmental pattern, the spectral tilt and formant bandwidth, and the segmental duration of the vowel /a/ and the consonant /h/. Then, perceptually significant acoustic features were investigated by using means of replacement of the acoustic parameters of the normally uttered speech by those of the laughter in speech analysis‐synthesis system. The results showed that an increased pitch in average and distinct intrasegmental pitch pattern as well as spectral envelope with broad bandwidths are significant features to characterize the laughter. The laughter synthesis by rule was also investigated by manipulating these acoustic parameters.
Skip Nav Destination
Article navigation
November 2006
Meeting abstract. No PDF available.
November 01 2006
Acoustic analysis and synthesis of laughter
Toshiaki Haga;
Toshiaki Haga
Dept. of Sci. and Eng., Univ. of Waseda, 3‐4‐1 Okubo, Rm. 55S‐609, Shinjuku‐ku, Tokyo 169‐8555, Japan
Search for other works by this author on:
Masaaki Honda;
Masaaki Honda
Dept. of Sci. and Eng., Univ. of Waseda, 3‐4‐1 Okubo, Rm. 55S‐609, Shinjuku‐ku, Tokyo 169‐8555, Japan
Search for other works by this author on:
Katsuhiko Shirai
Katsuhiko Shirai
Dept. of Sci. and Eng., Univ. of Waseda, 3‐4‐1 Okubo, Rm. 55S‐609, Shinjuku‐ku, Tokyo 169‐8555, Japan
Search for other works by this author on:
J. Acoust. Soc. Am. 120, 3374 (2006)
Citation
Toshiaki Haga, Masaaki Honda, Katsuhiko Shirai; Acoustic analysis and synthesis of laughter. J. Acoust. Soc. Am. 1 November 2006; 120 (5_Supplement): 3374. https://doi.org/10.1121/1.4781587
Download citation file:
84
Views
Citing articles via
All we know about anechoic chambers
Michael Vorländer
A survey of sound source localization with deep learning methods
Pierre-Amaury Grumiaux, Srđan Kitić, et al.
Performance study of ray-based ocean acoustic tomography methods for estimating submesoscale variability in the upper ocean
Etienne Ollivier, Richard X. Touret, et al.
Related Content
Acoustic profiles of distinct emotional expressions in laughter
J. Acoust. Soc. Am. (July 2009)
Synthesis of laughter by modifying excitation characteristics
J. Acoust. Soc. Am. (May 2013)
Automatic acoustic synthesis of human-like laughter
J. Acoust. Soc. Am. (January 2007)
An acoustic analysis of laughter produced by congenitally deaf and normally hearing college students
J. Acoust. Soc. Am. (July 2008)
Analysis and synthesis of laughter
J Acoust Soc Am (October 2004)