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Forensic Phonetics

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Forensic Phonetics
Forensic Phonetics:
Issues in speaker identification evidence Andrew Butcher
Centre for Human Communication Research Flinders Medical Research Institute Flinders University, Adelaide, Australia

Abstract The field of forensic phonetics has developed over the last 20 years or so and embraces a number of areas involving analysis of the recorded human voice. The area in which expert opinion is most frequently sought is that of speaker identification – the question of whether two or more recordings of speech (from suspect and perpetrator) are from the same speaker. Automated analysis (in which Australia is a world leader) is only possible where recording conditions are identical. In the most frequently encountered real-world forensic situation, comparison is required between a police interview recording and recordings made via telephone intercepts or listening devices. This necessitates a complex procedure, involving auditory and acoustic comparison of both linguistic and non-linguistic features of the speech samples in order to build up a profile of the speaker. The most commonly used measures are average fundamental frequency and the first and second formant frequencies of vowels. Much work is still needed to develop appropriate statistical procedures for the evaluation of phonetic evidence. This means estimating the probability of finding the observed differences between samples from the same speaker and the probability of finding those same differences between samples from two different speakers. Thus there needs to be an acceptance that the outcome will not be an absolute identification or exclusion of the suspect. By itself, your voice is not a complete giveaway. 1. The field of forensic phonetics The use of phonetics as a forensic tool has developed over the past 20 years or so (Hollien 1990; Baldwin & French 1991), but with the rapid expansion in the number of cases depending on the evidence of covert audio and video recordings in recent years, forensic



References: BALDWIN J & FRENCH P (1991) Forensic Phonetics. London & New York: Pinter. BRAUN A (1995) Fundamental frequency – how speaker-specific is it? In: A BRAUN & J-P KÖSTER (eds) Studies in Forensic Phonetics. Trier: Wissenschaftlicher Verlag Trier, 9-23. BROEDERS APA & RIETVELD ACM (1995) Speaker identification by earwitness. In A Braun and J-P Köster (eds), Studies in Forensic Phonetics. Trier: Wissenschaftlicher Verlag. BUTCHER AR & MOODY MP (1999) The case of the ‘third voice’: a rare opportunity for closed set comparison in the forensic context. Paper presented at the Annual Conference of the International Association for Forensic Phonetics, York, England. ESLING JH (1994) Voice quality. In R.E. Asher & J.M.Y. Simpson (eds) The Encyclopedia of Language and Linguistics. Oxford: Pergamon Press, 4950-4953. GRUBA JS & POZA FT (1995) Voicegram identification evidence. 54 American Jurisprudence Trials 1. HOLLIEN H (1990) The Acoustics of Crime. New York & London: Plenum. HOLLIEN H (2002) Forensic Voice Identification. San Diego: Academic Press. HOLLIEN H, HUNTLEY RA, KÜNZEL HJ & HOLLIEN PA (1995) Criteria for earwitness lineups. Forensic Linguistics 2, 143-153. ISSHIKI N & TAKEUCHI Y (1970) Factor analysis of hoarseness. Studia Phonologica 5, 37-44. KÜNZEL HJ (1989) How well does average fundamental frequency correlate with speaker height and weight? Phonetica 46, 117-125. LAVER J (1980) The Phonetic Description of Voice Quality. Cambridge: Cambridge University Press. OATES JM & RUSSELL A (1998) Learning voice analysis using an interactive multi-media package: Development and preliminary evaluation. Journal of Voice 12, 500-512. MILLAR JB, VONWILLER J, HARRINGTON JM & DERMODY P (1994). The Australian National Database of Spoken Language. Proceedings of the International Conference on Acoustics, Speech and Signal Processing, Adelaide, 67-100. MITCHELL AG & DELBRIDGE A (1965) The pronunciation of English in Australia (revised edition). Sydney: Angus and Robertson. 15 Forensic Phonetics Butcher ROBERTSON B & VIGNAUX GA (1995) Interpreting Evidence: Evaluating Forensic Science in the Courtroom. New York: John Wiley & Sons. ROSE P (2002) Forensic Speaker Identification. London: Taylor & Francis. WARREN J (1999) ‘Wogspeak’: transformations of Australian English. Journal of Australian Studies 62, 86-94. WENDLER J, RAUHUT A & KRÜGER H (1986) Classification of voice qualities. Journal of Phonetics 14, 483-488. 16

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