Acoustical Analysis of Intonation Pattern in Kashmiri Speakers

The study aimed to investigate terminal intonation patterns in Kashmiri across declarative, imperative, interrogative, and exclamatory sentences and to identify differences between male and female speakers.

Speech samples were recorded using a Sennheiser Electret condenser microphone at a 44,100 Hz sampling rate. F0 contours were analyzed using Praat software and the PHH model. Acoustic parameters included pitch, jitter, shimmer, harmonicity, and intensity. Statistical analysis was performed using t tests in SAS version 9.2.

The study examined variations in fundamental frequency, jitter, shimmer, harmonicity, and intensity across sentence types and between male and female Kashmiri speakers.

This study provides preliminary descriptive information on terminal fundamental-frequency patterns and selected acoustic characteristics in a sample of young adult Kashmiri speakers. Gender-related differences were observed in pitch measures, while terminal F0 contours varied across the selected sentence types. Given the limited sample, restricted age range, and small number of elicitation stimuli, the findings should not be interpreted as comprehensive normative reference values. Further research involving larger and more linguistically diverse samples is required to establish the generalizability of these observations and investigate their relevance to clinical speech and voice assessment.