A Study of F1 Correlation with F0 in a Tone Language: Case of Thai

This is an empirical study of vowels of Thai language as spoken in Bangkok in terms of two parameters, namely - tones, levels and contours as reflected in F0 variations, and lower formant, F1 which is high for open/ low vowels and low for close/ high vowels. We examine each one of the nine long vowels with all the five phonemic tones to find out the correlation between the pitch of voice, a laryngeal phenomenon and the first formant which is part of the resonance phenomenon. The results give us some interesting hypotheses to be explored further with data from different tonal and non-tonal languages. F1-F0 correlations, if established will have significant implications for TTS studies, for comparison across speakers for speaker characterization and forensic applications.