Relations Between Prosodic Variables and Emotions in Normal American English Utterances

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Abstract
The emotional states of an adult male American speaker, as reflected in 30 utterances, were evaluated by 12 subjects on nine 7-point semantic differential scales. The subjects also evaluated the utterances on similar scales for pitch, loudness, and speed. Significant correlations were found between some acoustic variables and the judgments of some types of emotion. Higher correlations were found between the acoustic variables and judgments of degree of emotion. Correlation coefficients between judgments of emotion and judgments of prosodic features were in general higher than the correlations involving the acoustic variables. Degree of perceived emotion was found to be highly and positively correlated with fundamental frequency range and intensity range. A causal explanation of these relations in terms of human physiology is suggested.

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