Particularities of the (not so) emotional speech in European Portuguese: Acted and spontaneous data analysis

• Main Author: Ana Margarida Belém Nunes
• Format: Article
• Language: English
• Published: University of Montenegro 2017-12-01
• Series: Logos et Littera: Interdisciplinary Approaches to Text
• Subjects: European Portuguese; Emotion
• Online Access: http://www.ll.ac.me/LL%204(2)/4.pdf

The present article is a symbiosis of two previous studies made by the author on European Portuguese Emotional Speech. It is known that nonverbal vocal expressions, such as laughter, vocalizations and, for instance, screams are an important source of emotional cues in social contexts (Lima et al., 2013). In social contexts we get information’s about others emotional states also by facial and corporal expressions, touch and voice cues, (Lima et al., 2013 & Cowie et al, 2003). Nevertheless most of the existent research on emotion is based on simulated emotions that are induced in laboratory and/or produced by professional actors. In this study in particular, it is proposed to explore how much and in which voice related parameters spontaneous and acted speech diverge. On the other hand, this study will help to obtain data on emotional speech and to describe the expression of emotions, by voice alone, for the first time for European Portuguese. Analyses are mainly focused on parameters that are generally accepted as more directly related with voice quality like F0; jitter; shimmer and HNR (Lima et all, 2013; Tiovanen et al, 2006; Drioli et all, 2003). Given the scarcity of studies on voice quality in European Portuguese, it is important to highlight that this work presents original corpora specifically created for the presented research: a small corpus for spontaneous emotional speech and Feeltrace system to provide the necessary annotation and interpretation of emotions; a second corpus for acted emotions produced by a professional actor. It is particularly important to highlight that was found that European Portuguese presents some specificities on the values obtained for neutral expression, sadness and joy, that do not occur in other languages.