Voice quality dimensions of pitch accents

Acoustic and electroglottographic (EGG) measurements were used to examine voice quality parameters during the production of the rising and falling pitch movements in German. The vowels / / and / / were studied in a single-speaker speech corpus. The acoustic measurements comprised an automatic spectral analysis of the glottal parameters open quotient (OQ), glottal opening (GO), skewness of glottal pulse (SK), rate of closure (RC), amplitude of voicing (AV) and completeness of closure (CC). OQ and AV seem to be the only acoustic parameters influenced by pitch accent and not by word stress. From the electroglottographic measurements only open quotient parameters (OQI and OQII), two parameters of closing phase (SCV and SCA) and two parameters of opening phase (EOV and EOT) showed a significant difference as a function of pitch accent type.