Radek Skarnitzl
Biographic Data
| ID | 5887445 |
|---|---|
| NAME | Radek Skarnitzl |
| GIVEN NAMES | Radek |
| FAMILY NAME | Skarnitzl |
| SIGNATURE | SKARNITZL R |
| AFFILIATIONS | Charles University |
| ORCID | 0000-0002-5682-1962 |
| VERIFIED | Yes |
| TOTAL WORKS | 10 |
| TOTAL CITATIONS | 1 |
| WORKS AS AUTHOR | 10 |
| WORKS AS EDITOR | 0 |
| FIRST PUBLICATION YEAR | 2017 |
| LATEST PUBLICATION YEAR | 2026 |
| H-INDEX | 1 |
Vowel duration in stressed and unstressed syllables in spontaneous English
Many phonetic “truths” are based on descriptions of controlled speech material, and verifying their validity in spontaneous productions is essential. The present study investigates vowel duration as an acoustic correlate of stress in spontaneous English, in communicatively motivated contexts. By analyzing British and American political debates, this study aims to verify previously reported tendencies – specifically, that stressed vowels are signi…
Acoustic Phonetics and L2 Pronunciation
When learning the pronunciation of a second language, we typically rely on listening. However, a visual display of selected acoustic characteristics of speech may be beneficial for some learners. This chapter introduces the spectrogram as the primary means of depicting sound quality, as well as the basic types of sound present in the speech signal. The focus is placed on both segmental and prosodic characteristics of speech whose acoustic represe…
Prosodic Phrase in Spoken Czech
Controlled voice quality modifications
Within-speaker variability, which results from the plasticity of speech production, is an inherent feature of speaker comparison. This study examines targeted modifications of voice quality, both phonatory and articulatory, in Czech. Fifteen speakers were instructed to read a text in 15 different versions (e.g. palatalised voice, denasalised voice, breathy phonation, or a combination of open jaw and creaky voice). Acoustic analyses revealed that …
Intra- and inter-speaker variability of vowel space using three different formant extraction methods
Individual speakers’ voices display various unique patterns, one of the most prominent of which is vowel articulation. This study focuses on vowel space properties of 15 Czech speakers in read and spontaneous speech, comparing outputs of three formant extraction methods, measuring formants: (1) in the vowels’ temporal midpoints, (2) as their mean from the vowels’ middle thirds, and (3) in the vowels’ articulatory targets. The results show extensi…
The impact of mismatched recordings on an automatic-speaker-recognition system and human listeners
The so-called ‘mismatch’ is a factor which experts in the forensic voice comparison field encounter regularly. Therefore, we decided to explore to what extent the automatic-speaker-recognition system’s and the earwitness’ ability to identify speakers is influenced when recordings are acquired in different languages and at different times. 100 voices in a database of 300 recordings (100 speakers recorded in three mutually mismatched sessions) were…
Phonetic variation of Irish English /t/ in the syllabic coda
The consonant /t/ is acknowledged as being an immensely variable sound in the accents of English. This study aims to contribute to accounting for this variability by analyzing the phonetic realizations of /t/ in 21 speakers (15 female, six male) of Southern Irish English. The speakers were asked to read a short text (Deterding 2006) and to speak spontaneously with the experimenter. In total, 1,519 items of /t/ in coda positions were examined by c…
Glottalization and linking in the L2 speech of Czech learners of Spanish, Italian and Portuguese
The use of linking or glottalization contributes to the characteristic sound pattern of a language, and the use of one in place of the other may affect a speaker’s comprehensibility and fluency in certain contexts. In this study, native speakers of Czech, a language that is associated with a frequent use of glottalization in vowel-initial word onsets, are examined in the second language (L2) context of three Romance languages that predominantly e…
Tuning the performance of automatic speaker recognition in different conditions
Automatic speaker recognition applications have often been described as a ‘black box’. This study explores the benefit of tuning procedures (condition adaptation and reference normalisation) implemented in an i-vector PLDA framework ASR system, VOCALISE. These procedures enable users to open the black box to a certain degree. Subsets of two 100-speaker databases, one of Czech and the other of Persian male speakers, are used for the baseline condi…
Voicing Assimilation in Czech and Slovak Speakers of English
This study focuses on voicing assimilation across word boundaries in the speech of second language (L2) users. We compare native speakers of British English to speakers of two West Slavic languages, Czech and Slovak, which, despite their many similarities, differ with respect to voicing assimilation rules. Word-final voicing was analysed in 30 speakers, using the static value of voicing percentage and the voicing profile method. The results of li…
Voicing Assimilation in Czech and Slovak Speakers of English
This study focuses on voicing assimilation across word boundaries in the speech of second language (L2) users. We compare native speakers of British English to speakers of two West Slavic languages, Czech and Slovak, which, despite their many similarities, differ with respect to voicing assimilation rules. Word-final voicing was analysed in 30 speakers, using the static value of voicing percentage and the voicing profile method. The results of li…
Voicing Assimilation in Czech and Slovak Speakers of English
This study focuses on voicing assimilation across word boundaries in the speech of second language (L2) users. We compare native speakers of British English to speakers of two West Slavic languages, Czech and Slovak, which, despite their many similarities, differ with respect to voicing assimilation rules. Word-final voicing was analysed in 30 speakers, using the static value of voicing percentage and the voicing profile method. The results of li…
Tuning the performance of automatic speaker recognition in different conditions
Automatic speaker recognition applications have often been described as a ‘black box’. This study explores the benefit of tuning procedures (condition adaptation and reference normalisation) implemented in an i-vector PLDA framework ASR system, VOCALISE. These procedures enable users to open the black box to a certain degree. Subsets of two 100-speaker databases, one of Czech and the other of Persian male speakers, are used for the baseline condi…
Glottalization and linking in the L2 speech of Czech learners of Spanish, Italian and Portuguese
The use of linking or glottalization contributes to the characteristic sound pattern of a language, and the use of one in place of the other may affect a speaker’s comprehensibility and fluency in certain contexts. In this study, native speakers of Czech, a language that is associated with a frequent use of glottalization in vowel-initial word onsets, are examined in the second language (L2) context of three Romance languages that predominantly e…
Phonetic variation of Irish English /t/ in the syllabic coda
The consonant /t/ is acknowledged as being an immensely variable sound in the accents of English. This study aims to contribute to accounting for this variability by analyzing the phonetic realizations of /t/ in 21 speakers (15 female, six male) of Southern Irish English. The speakers were asked to read a short text (Deterding 2006) and to speak spontaneously with the experimenter. In total, 1,519 items of /t/ in coda positions were examined by c…
Intra- and inter-speaker variability of vowel space using three different formant extraction methods
Individual speakers’ voices display various unique patterns, one of the most prominent of which is vowel articulation. This study focuses on vowel space properties of 15 Czech speakers in read and spontaneous speech, comparing outputs of three formant extraction methods, measuring formants: (1) in the vowels’ temporal midpoints, (2) as their mean from the vowels’ middle thirds, and (3) in the vowels’ articulatory targets. The results show extensi…
The impact of mismatched recordings on an automatic-speaker-recognition system and human listeners
The so-called ‘mismatch’ is a factor which experts in the forensic voice comparison field encounter regularly. Therefore, we decided to explore to what extent the automatic-speaker-recognition system’s and the earwitness’ ability to identify speakers is influenced when recordings are acquired in different languages and at different times. 100 voices in a database of 300 recordings (100 speakers recorded in three mutually mismatched sessions) were…
Prosodic Phrase in Spoken Czech
Controlled voice quality modifications
Within-speaker variability, which results from the plasticity of speech production, is an inherent feature of speaker comparison. This study examines targeted modifications of voice quality, both phonatory and articulatory, in Czech. Fifteen speakers were instructed to read a text in 15 different versions (e.g. palatalised voice, denasalised voice, breathy phonation, or a combination of open jaw and creaky voice). Acoustic analyses revealed that …
Acoustic Phonetics and L2 Pronunciation
When learning the pronunciation of a second language, we typically rely on listening. However, a visual display of selected acoustic characteristics of speech may be beneficial for some learners. This chapter introduces the spectrogram as the primary means of depicting sound quality, as well as the basic types of sound present in the speech signal. The focus is placed on both segmental and prosodic characteristics of speech whose acoustic represe…
Vowel duration in stressed and unstressed syllables in spontaneous English
Many phonetic “truths” are based on descriptions of controlled speech material, and verifying their validity in spontaneous productions is essential. The present study investigates vowel duration as an acoustic correlate of stress in spontaneous English, in communicatively motivated contexts. By analyzing British and American political debates, this study aims to verify previously reported tendencies – specifically, that stressed vowels are signi…
Linguistics (7 works) · Phonetics and Phonology Research (6 works) · Psychology (6 works) · Computer Science (5 works) · Czech (5 works) · Speech Recognition and Synthesis (5 works) · Vowel (5 works) · Linguistic Variation and Morphology (4 works) · Mathematics (4 works) · Speech recognition (4 works)