INTRODUCTION

Pitch is one of the vital parts of speaking and listening in most languages in the world. Like
English is a language in which meaning changes accord to the tone or intonation of the speaker,
pitch and it's range are an important part of spoken English. This research paper is going to
show an investigation of the difference in height between the female voice and the male voice
solely to establish and confirm the general assumption that the pitch of a man KS relatively
lower than that of a woman and s child. This speech sound invsti is going to be facilitated by a
tool of experimental phonetics ; a software called praat.

EXPERIMENTAL PHONETICS

Experimental Phonetics investigates the production of speech, its perception and the nature of
the acoustic signal that is transmitted from speaker to listener .it is the branch of general
phonetics that involves itself in the study of the sound and other human speech units by
applying experimental method .Simply put, experimental phonetics is any investigation of
speech with the aid of an instrument. According to the representatives of kazan linguistics
school, experimental recordings contribute to improving the skills not only of motor perception
o speech

PRAAT

Praat is a software for digital acoustic analysis of speech which offers unprecedented
opportunities for the analysis of speech samples for different purposes ,including education ,
clinical practice and research.Praat is one of the instrument used in conducting experimental
phonetics .praat is a computer program for analyzing ,synthesizing and manipulating speech
and other sounds to make a particular finding ,to answer research questions or to make factual
deductions.In the praat window,a phonetician has the capability to record and play a particular
sound on which his investigation would be carried out.This research paper contains an analysis
made to determine or to confirm that generally women have a higher pitch ratio to men
PITCH

Pitch is the relative highness or lowness of a tone as perceived by the,itusually depends on the
number of vibrations per second by the vocal cords.It is therefore the volume level And
movement patterns of the voice.it is the perceived height of the human voice which depends
on the rapidity of the vibration of the vocal cords.Pitch is a supersegmental feature which is
closely associated with tone and intonation .In tonal languages like igbo language,pitcg plays a
vital role in determining the meaning of an utterance.it is pertinent to know that a speakers
pitch may be situationally (or culturally) influenced and all individuals have different average
speech pitch. Pitch is an important component of accentuation, or prominence, both at
the level of individual words and at the level of longer utterances (Martha, 1996:148). The pitch
of voice is determined by the frequency with which the vocal cords vibrate. The frequency of
vibration of the vocal cords is determined by their thickness, their length and their tension. As
Martha (1996:148) states, one’s natural average pitch level depends on the size of the vocal
cords. In general, men have thicker and longer vocal cords than women and children do. As a
result, the modal pitch of man’s voice is generally lower than that of a woman or a child

Pitch Range

In addition to the modal pitch, every individual voice has a pitch range which can be achieved
by adjustments of the vocal cords. By tightening the vocal cords, a person can raise the pitch of
the voice by loosening them, one can lower vocal pitch. When the vocal cords are stretched,
the pitch of voice increases. Pitch variations in speech are realized by the alteration of the
tension of vocal cords (Ladefoged, 1982:226). These adjustments allow speakers to use pitch
changes to achieve certain meaningful effects in speech.

The most important of all factors for the pitch of the voice is the vibration of vocal cords. When
frequency of vibration increases, so does the pitch. Normally, a low pitch is not less than 70 Hz
while a high pitch is not more than 200 Hz. (Çelik, 2003:101).Pitch range can be divided into
three parts as high, mid and low.
Most importantly, the pitch range of utterance shows the speaker’s attitude towards the
information that s/he is conveying. As Brazil, Coulthard and Johns (1980:163) indicates, the
neutral, unmarked, mid pitch range – which is the speaker’s modal pitch – is used to make a
statement in a neutral manner.

In contrast, high pitch range indicates an informational contrast as shown in example (a).
Because high pitch range implies a contrast even when one is not explicitly present in the
discourse, it can be used to single out individual words for special attention as in the example

a) I’m going to Harvard, not Yale!

b) I’d never do that.

Low pitch range is used when the speaker wants to assert that two items in successive tone
units are in some sense equivalent, as in the example (c):

c) I told you already, dummy.

Here the low pitch range on "dummy" signals that it is to be interpreted as connected with
"you."

PARTICIPANTS AND PROCEDURE

Two adults participated in the research one male and one female .They pronounced the high
and low vowels and these product were recorded into the praat window for analysis .The data
recorded was converted into numbers by sound wave analysis and recorded to aid in the
recognition of the disparities .The produced sound recordings are contained in the table below
PITCH HIGH (Hz) LOW (Hz)
Pi
F0 197.3 146.8
F1 256.58 302.30
F2 2184.96 2243.77
F3 2827.17 2450.83
Pii
F0 210.6 202.2
F1 447.21 601.13
F2 900.78 809.09
F3 2326.70 1646.36
P’a
PITCH HIGH (Hz) LOW (Hz)
F0 191.7 165.6
F1 791.09 367.96
F2 1279.10 781.58
F3 2029.78 2249.40
Bi
F0 194.6 261.8
F1 258.19 757.21
F2 2298.39 1253.94
F3 139.25 2362.06
Bu
PITCH HIGH (Hz) LOW (Hz)
F0 197.1 178.9
F1 327.52 520.68
F2 935.09 1071.23
F3 2343.82 2685.43
Ba
F0 173.0 132.80
F1 803.97 611.55
F2 1112.91 1065.70
F3 2243.21 2245.20
Di
F0 317.7 283.0
F1 413.67 601.41
F2 2826.76 2055.71
F3 3215.36 3100.12
Pu
PITCH HIGH (Hz) LOW (Hz)
F0 315.5 193.3
F1 582.65 422.35
F2 954.65 863.34
F3 3485.10 2593.79
Pa
F0 298.6 196.4
 F1 1042.72 965.88
F2 1260.74 1356.51
F3 2543.52 2368.68
Bi
PITCH HIGH (Hz) LOW (Hz)
F0 318.7 207.5
F1 423.07 483.06
F2 1557.11 2884.99
F3 2597.03 3283.46
Bu
F0 321.6 213.6
F1 400.55 414.30
F2 919.11 536.47
F3 3319.6 2466.20
Ba
F0 298.9 193.1
F1 880.44 932.73
F2 1522.62 1302.88
F3 1807.62 1652.32

These recordings show that praat generates an accurate and comparable F0 and F1, F2 and F3 .
In general,men have thicker and longer vocal cords than women and children do,as a result,the
modal pitch of a man's voice is generally lower than thatog a woman as has been made evident
by Te figures above.

Summary

The pitch of voice is primarily determined by the tension and vibration of vocal cords,
secondarily by the amount of air force coming from lungs (Çelik, 2003:111). Every individual
voice has a pitch range which can be achieved by adjustments of the vocal cords. Pitch is a very
important part of speaking and listening. There are three parts of the pitch range: low, mid and
high pitch. The pitch movement changes depending on the sentence is completed or not, or if it
is a yes/no question, wh-question, or answer statement.