Inter-speaker interaction of F0 in dialogs

Presents some preliminary results of a study on the inter-speaker interaction of fundamental vocal frequency (F0) during dialogs. Simple question-answer type dialogs (in Japanese) were recorded and analyzed. The results revealed all three possible patterns of F0 interaction: in some cases, the two speakers' F0's converged as the dialog progressed, while in other cases they diverged; there were also cases in which they maintained a parallel relation to each other throughout the dialog. The results also indicated that the dialog-initial difference in the two speakers' F0 values was closely related to the consequent overall pattern of F0 interaction during the dialog. Partner-dependent reorganization of dialog-initial F0 was observed for some of the speakers.