Variation of Perceived Voice Pitch Across Time Periods, Gender, and Age in French Media Archives

Simon Devauchelle; Albert Rilliard; David Doukhan; Lucas Ondel Yang

doi:10.17469/O2112AISV000004

Authors

Simon Devauchelle Université Paris-Saclay, Francia https://orcid.org/0009-0009-0956-405X
Albert Rilliard Université Paris Saclay, CNRS, LISN, Francia https://orcid.org/0000-0001-6490-2386
David Doukhan Institut National de l’Audiovisuel (INA), Francia https://orcid.org/0000-0002-1645-7334
Lucas Ondel Yang Université Paris Saclay, CNRS, LISN, Francia https://orcid.org/0000-0003-4512-0471

DOI:

https://doi.org/10.17469/O2112AISV000004

Keywords:

Voice pitch, Gender, Diachrony, Audiovisual archives, Fundamental frequency, Vocal Tract Length, Formants

Abstract

Have female voices lowered with time? A diachronic corpus based on French television or radio shows, constructed around four Periods (1955-56, 1975-76, 1995-96, 2015-16), grouping 1028 cisgender female and male speakers of four age categories. The speakers' voices were automatically segmented at the phone level, and acoustically analyzed. The fundamental frequency (F₀) and the formants were estimated; from the formants, the vocal tract length was calculated. Linear mixed regressions were fitted to these acoustic cues to estimate the role of the speaker's Age, Gender, and Period. The models showed few gender-specific changes in pitch-related parameters across Periods. Mean F₀ decreases with age for females, while it increases for males. The first formant decreases for open vowels over time Periods. These observations do not support a lowering of female voices over time. Results are discussed in the light of previous studies and changes in the structure of the French population.