Pitch

Pitch is a perceptual feature of speech. It is the ear’s response to frequency. Pitch changes, it becomes higher or lower, when the frequency of the voice changes. The human voice is a complex sound composed of many frequencies. A listener’s perception of a speaker’s pitch depends mostly on the lowest frequency or fundamental frequency (F0) of voice, which is the frequency of vibration of the vocal folds. Pitch is also a suprasegmental feature of speech; “segments” are the sounds of speech, and the suprasegmentals are properties that are “overlaid” on those segments. Pitch is not a property of a single sound but extends over words and utterances. It carries important linguistic and extralinguistic functions. It can change the meaning of words and utterances and ...