POTENTIAL OF FILLED PAUSES AS A PARAMETER FOR FORENSIC VOICE COMPARISON IN THAI

Abstract

This study investigates the viability of filled pauses as a parameter for forensic voice comparison (FVC) in the Thai language, aiming to determine their frequency, acoustic properties, and effectiveness in distinguishing speakers. A corpus of spontaneous speech from 20 female native Thai speakers was analyzed to examine frequency and acoustic properties of filled pauses. Results show that Thai speakers used common filled pauses (such as ‘um’ and ‘uh’) less frequently compared to speakers of other languages. Analysis reveals that the filled pause ‘uh’ [(ʔ)ɤ̀:] has moderate within-speaker variation but significantly high between- speaker variation. While further research is needed to validate their usage, this study strongly suggests that Thai filled pauses could serve as an effective parameter for forensic voice comparison in Thai.