A new diphone database with a full diphone set for each of three levels of vocal e#ort is presented. A theoretical motivation is given why this kind of database will be useful for emotional speech synthesis. Two hypotheses are verified in perception experiments: (I) The three diphone sets are perceived as belonging to the same speaker; (II) The vocal e#ort intended during database recordings is perceived in the synthetic voice. The results clearly confirm both hypotheses.

Analyses of jaw movement (obtained by Electromagnetic Articulography) and acoustics show that loud speech is an intricate phenomenon. Besides involving higher intensity and subglottal pressure it affects jaw movements as well as fundamental frequency and especially first formants. It is argued that all these effects serve the purpose of enhancing perceptual salience.

I decided to study linguistics when I had become interested in constructed languages, and I asked myself how a language should be constituted in order to serve its purpose in the best way. Since this engineer’s conception of a language as a more or less suitably shaped tool for communication is unusual among linguists, the studies did not really help me much further. Due to my background in telecommunications, I became also attracted to theoretical and applied phonetics. My subsequent research was mainly concerned with speech perception, especially against the background of extra- and paralinguistic variation. It is within this field my research has had the kind of impact that I take to motivate my application. Interlinguistics and language planning In a term paper (5) and a conference contribution, I discussed the adequacy, social base, and cost/benefit relation of possible global interlanguages, with costs proportional to learning time and benefit proportional to the GNP the users represent. I pointed out that most constructed interlanguages were based on Western languages only, while there were three additional, similarly populous cultural regions, each with its own shared vocabulary. Although there are compilations of ‘international words ’ and studies of their diffusion, these do not provide a global overview.