THE MELODIC RANGE AS A METRIC IN THE DOMAIN OF FOREIGN LANGUAGE TEACHING

VOL. 60, BOOK 1, PART А, 2022, pp. 443 – 450 Full text (Bg)

Author: Malina Dicheva, Rusi Nikolov

Affiliation: Paisii Hilendarski University of Plovdiv

Abstract
It has been shown that speaking a foreign language can give rise to psychological stress, and thereby cause specific pronunciation changes which worsen the pronunciation of the speaker. Timbre alterations and rise in F0 are such eventual phenomena. In this paper we’ll examine the alteration of the voice
range profile of foreign language speakers not only in terms of average value of the fundamental frequency, but also in terms of its standard deviation. The standard deviation can easily be interpreted as a reliable measure of the melodic monotony or expressiveness of speech.

Key words: Psychological Stress, Fundamental Frequency, Voice Pitch Shifting, Voice Range Change, Melodic Expressiveness