A statistical study of pitch target points in five languages.

We present the results of a large-scale statistical study of pitch target points in five languages, on a corpus comprising 4 hours 20 minutes of speech and involving 50 different speakers. The entire corpus has been stylized automatically by a technique reducing the F0 contour to a series of target points representing the significant pitch changes. It was then entirely verified by experts using a resynthesis method, in order to ensure that there was no audible difference with the original. The set of ca. 50000 pitch target points thus obtained was then analyzed from a statistical point of view. In this paper we describe the main results of this study, in terms of frequency distribution of target points, pitch movements and relation of pitch movements to time interval. Our study reveals interesting differences across languages and sex.