Institut für Computerlinguistik

I am currently the principal investigator of two main projects funded by the Swiss National Science Foundation (SNSF – "Ambizione") and the University of Zurich (Forschungskredit).  

        Within the scope of the SNSF–"Ambizione" project, we aim to untangle the nexus between what we sound like and how we look. The speech production apparatus and intricacies are "housed" within the cranio-facial structure, which constraints and modulates the voice signal. Our idiosyncratic voice is, to a great extent, related to our physiology. Combining the methods in soft-tissue cepholometry, articulatory phonetics and speech acoustics, the nexus will be unveiled. You can watch this podcast about the project. Carolina Lins Machado is the PhD student employed in this project.

        Within the scope of the UZH–Forschungskredit project, we aim to elucidate how temporal regularity in speech (i.e. speech rhythm) is related to the temporal regularity of movements of articulators (in particular mouth movements). This project overlaps with the SNSF–"Ambizione" project, in modeling the dynamics between characteristic movements of the vocal apparatus and the acoustic signal. 

        A collaboration with the Department of Phoniatrics and Speech Pathology, Clinic for Otorhinolaryngology, Head and Neck Surgery, University Hospital Zurich spins off from the projects. Please follow this link for more details.

Journal articles 

He, L. (2022) Characterizing first and second language rhythm in English using spectral coherence between temporal envelope and mouth opening-closing movements. Journal of the Acoustical Society of America 152(1): 567–579. https://doi.org/10.1121/10.0012694 

Pellegrino, E., He, L. and Dellwo, V. (2021) Age-related rhythmic variations: The role of syllable intensity variability. Travaux Neuchâtelois de Linguistique 74:167–185. https://doi.org/10.26034/tranel.2021.2924 

He, L. and Zhang, Y. (2020) Characterizing speech rhythm using spectral coherence between jaw displacement and speech temporal envelope. Loquens 7: e74. https://doi.org/10.3989/loquens.2020.074 

He, L., Zhang, Y., and Dellwo, V. (2019) Between-speaker variability and temporal organization of the first formant. Journal of the Acoustical Society of America 145(3): EL209–EL214. https://doi.org/10.1121/1.5093450 

Dellwo, V., Pellegrino, E., He, L., and Kathiresan, T. (2019) The dynamics of indexical information in speech: Can recognizability be controlled by the speaker? Acta Universitatis Carolinae: Philologica 2019(2): 57–75. https://doi.org/10.14712/24646830.2019.18 

杨俊杰, 何磊, 陈建新, 胡耀民, 李剑锋 (2019) 音强斜率特性区别同卵双胞胎语音的实验研究. «应用声学» 38(3): 364–370. http://dx.doi.org/10.11684/j.issn.1000-310X.2019.03.011 

He, L. (2018) Development of speech rhythm in first language: The role of syllable intensity variability. Journal of the Acoustical Society of America 143(6): EL463–EL467. https://doi.org/10.1121/1.5042083 

Asadi, H., Nourbakhsh, M., He, L., Pellegrino, E., and Dellwo, V. (2018) Between-speaker rhythmic variability is not dependent on language rhythm, as evidence from Persian reveals. International Journal of Speech, Language and the Law 25(2): 151–174. https://doi.org/10.1558/ijsll.37110 

He, L. and Dellwo, V. (2017) Between-speaker variability in temporal organizations of intensity contours. Journal of the Acoustical Society of America 141(5): EL488–EL494. https://doi.org/10.1121/1.4983398 

He, L. and Dellwo, V. (2016) The role of syllable intensity in between-speaker rhythmic variability. International Journal of Speech, Language and the Law 23(2): 243–273. https://doi.org/10.1558/ijsll.v23i2.30345 

He, L. (2011) Metacognition in EFL pronunciation learning among Chinese tertiary learners. Applied Language Learning 21(1&2): 1–27. https://doi.org/10.5167/uzh-128569

Full peer-reviewed conference proceedings

Lins Machado, C., Dellwo, V., and He, L. (2022) Idiosyncratic lingual articulation of American English /æ/ and /ɑ/ using network analysis. Proc. Interspeech 2022, Incheon, South Korea (18–22 Sept 2022).

Zhang, Y., He, L., and Dellwo, V. (2018) Speaker individuality in the durational characteristics of voiced intervals: The case of chinese bi-dialectal speakers. Proc. 19th International Congress of Phonetic Sciences (ICPhS), Melbourne, Australia (5–9 Aug, 2019), pp. 3075–3079. https://www.internationalphoneticassociation.org/icphs-proceedings/ICPhS2019/papers/ICPhS_3124.pdf

Dellwo, V., Kathiresan, T., Pellegrino, E., He, L., Schwab, S., Maurer, D. (2018) Influences of fundamental oscillation on speaker identification in vocalic utterances by humans and computers. Proc. Interspeech 2018, Hyderabad, India (2–6 Sept 2018), pp. 3795–3799.https://doi.org/10.21437/Interspeech.2018-2331 

Pellegrino, E., He, L., and Dellwo, V. (2018) The effect of ageing on speech rhythm: A study on Zurich German. Proc. Speech Prosody 2018, Poznań, Poland (13–16 June 2018), pp. 133–137. https://doi.org/10.21437/SpeechProsody.2018-27 

San Segundo, E., Schwab, S., Dellwo, V., He, L., Mompeán, J. (2017) Perception of vocal tract tension: Exploring possible prosodic correlates. VII Congreso Internacional de Fonética Experimental, Madrid, Spain (22–24 November 2017). https://doi.org/10.5167/uzh-145206 

He, L. and Dellwo, V. (2016) A Praat-based algorithm to extract the amplitude envelope and temporal fine structure using the Hilbert transform. Proc. Interspeech 2016, San Francisco, USA (8–12 September 2016) pp. 530–534. http://dx.doi.org/10.21437/Interspeech.2016-1447 

Glavitsch, U., He, L., Dellwo, V. (2015) Stable and unstable intervals as a basic segmentation procedure of the speech signal. Proc. Interspeech 2015, Dresden, Germany (6–10 September 2015), pp. 31–35. https://www.isca-speech.org/archive_v0/interspeech_2015/papers/i15_0031.pdf 

He, L., Glavitsch, U., and Dellwo, V. (2015) Comparisons of speaker recognition strengths using suprasegmental duration and intensity variability: An artificial neural networks approach. Proc. 18th International Congress of Phonetic Sciences (ICPhS), Glasgow, UK, (10–14 Aug 2015), paper 395. https://www.internationalphoneticassociation.org/icphs-proceedings/ICPhS2015/Papers/ICPHS0395.pdf 

He, L. and Dellwo, V. (2014) Speaker idiosyncratic variability of intensity across syllables. Proc. Interspeech 2014, Singapore (14–18 Sept 2014), pp. 233–237. https://www.isca-speech.org/archive/pdfs/interspeech_2014/he14_interspeech.pdf 

He, L. (2014) The inadequacy of rhythm metrics to quantify L2 suprasegmental characteristics. Proc. Speech Prosody 2014, Dublin, Ireland (20–23 May 2014), pp. 1095–1098. https://doi.org/10.5167/uzh-128617 

He, L. (2012) Syllabic intensity variations as quantification of speech rhythm: Evidence from both L1 and L2. Proc. Speech Prosody 2012, Shanghai, China (22–25 May 2012), pp. 466–469. https://www.isca-speech.org/archive_v0/sp2012/papers/sp12_466.pdf 

Book chapters

Dellwo, V., French, P., and He, L. (2018) Voice biometrics for speaker recognition applications. In The Oxford Handbook of Voice Perception, edited by S. Frühholz and P. Belin (Oxford University Press, Oxford, UK, 2018), pp. 777–795. https://doi.org/10.1093/oxfordhb/9780198743187.013.36

He, L. and Dellwo, V. (2017) Amplitude envelope kinematics of speech signal: Parameter extraction and applications. In Elektronische Sprachsignalverarbeitung (Electronic Speech Signal Processing) 2017, edited by J. Trouvain, I. Steiner and B. Möbius (TUDpress, Dresden, Germany), pp. 107–113. https://www.essv.de/pdf/2017_107_113.pdf?id=226 

Pellegrino, E., He, L., and Dellwo, V. (2017) Computation of L2 speech rhythm based on duration and fundamental frequency. In Elektronische Sprachsignalverarbeitung (Electronic Speech Signal Processing) 2017, edited by J. Trouvain, I. Steiner and B. Möbius (TUDpress, Dresden, Germany), pp. 246–253. https://www.essv.de/pdf/2017_246_253.pdf?id=247 

何磊 (2008) 英语语音学习的观念与策略, 载《英语学习的理念和策略》，吴红云，李守京主编，北京：中国广播电视出版社出版。

Keynote

He, L. (2021) Untangling the nexus between what we sound like and how we look. Keynote speech at the LiRI (Linguistic Research Infrastructure) Lab Launch, University of Zurich, 24 Sept. 2021. https://www.liri.uzh.ch/en/projects/Nexus_Lei.html 

Talks and posters at conferences and workshops (* without full-paper publications)

He, L. and Dellwo, V. (2022) The coordination between mouth opening-closing rhythm and information in speech <poster>, The 8th International Conference on Speech Motor Control (SMC), Groningen, the Netherlands, 24–27 Aug 2022.

Lins Machado, C. and He, L. (2022) Consistency and bias: Characterizing individual variability in the production of American English /æ/ and /ɑ/ <poster>, The 1st Interdisciplinary Conference on Voice Identity (VoiceID): Perception, Production, and Computational Approaches, Zurich, Switzerland, 4–6 July 2022.

Cao, H., Pan, C., and He, L. (2022) Speech length threshold in forensic voice comparison by using long-term fundamental frequency in Chinese Mandarin <talk>, The 30th Annual Conference of the International Association for Forensic Phonetics and Acoustics (IAFPA), Prague, Czech Republic, 11–13 July 2022.

Lins Machado, C. and He, L. (2022) Inter-speaker variability in the American English /æ/ and /ɑ/: a dynamic view from both tongue articulation and the first two formants <poster>, The 30th Annual Conference of the International Association for Forensic Phonetics and Acoustics (IAFPA), Prague, Czech Republic, 11–13 July 2022.

Heeren, W., and He, L. (2021) Between-speaker variability in segmental F1 dynamics in spontaneous speech <talk>, The 29th Annual Conference of the International Association for Forensic Phonetics and Acoustics (IAFPA), Marburg, Germany, 22–25 Aug 2022.

Zhang, Y., He, L., and Dellwo, V (2021) Between-speaker variability is explained differently in the speeds of mouth opening and closing movements: the case of English <poster>, The 29th Annual Conference of the International Association for Forensic Phonetics and Acoustics (IAFPA), Marburg, Germany, 22–25 Aug 2022.

He, L. (2021) Characterizing speech rhythm using spectral coherence between jaw displacement and speech temporal envelope <talk>, The 17th AISV (Italian Association for Speech Science) Conference, Zurich, Switzerland, 4–5 Feb 2021.

He, L. and Heeren, W. (2021) Between-speaker variability in dynamic formant characteristics in spontaneous speech <poster>, The 17th AISV (Italian Association for Speech Science) Conference, Zurich, Switzerland, 4–5 Feb 2021.

Zhang, Y., He, L., Kerdpol, K., and Dellwo, V. (2021) Between-speaker variability in intensity slopes: The case of Thai <poster>, The 17th AISV (Italian Association for Speech Science) Conference, Zurich, Switzerland, 4–5 Feb 2021.

He, L. (2021) Untangling the nexus between voice and face​: A cross-modal approach to talker identity <talk>, Joint Workshop on Speech Science Between UdS (Saarland University) and UZH (University of Zurich), online, 29 Jan 2021.

Over the years, I wrote tons of Praat scripts. I curated many that are generic enough in the OSF repository. Hopefully, they are helpful to a large audience. 

Dépôt of Praat scripts