An acoustic study of vocal expression in two genres of Yoruba oral poetry
Bibliographic record
Abstract
This pilot study proposes an acoustic study of the vocal expressions in Ìjálá and Ẹ̀sà, two genres of Yorùbá oral poetry. For this study, we conducted an experiment, involving the vocalization of an original poem in speech mode, Ìjálá and Ẹ̀sà. The vocalizations were recorded and analyzed acoustically. The results of the study show that cepstral peak prominence (CPP), Hammarberg index and Energy of voiced sound below 500 Hz distinguish comparisons of Ẹ̀sà, Ìjálá and speech but are not as reliable as F0 height and vibrato. By comparing the pitch trajectories of the speech tones and poetic tunes, we show that poetry determines tone-to-tune mapping but can accommodate language when it is feasible. The results of our investigation are not only in line with the previous impressionistic observations about vocal expression in Yorùbá oral poetry but contribute with new findings. Notably, our investigation supports vocal tremor as the historical origin of vibrato in Ìjálá. As a result of this, we strongly recommend the instruments of phonetic science for the study of vocal expression in African oral poetry.
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How this classification was reachedexpand
Full frame machine prediction
Teacher imitationNot calibrated prevalence, not ground truth. Human validation pending. The Gemma side is a direct model label for every work in the frame, read from the title-only record. The Codex side is a classifier learned from the 10,348 direct Codex labels and calibrated to design-weighted sample rates; fields without enough sample support carry no Codex call. Candidate is the union of the two sides; consensus is their intersection. These outputs are machine_predicted_unvalidated and are not human labels.
Distilled classifier scores by category (both heads)
| Category | Codex | Gemma |
|---|---|---|
| Metaresearch | 0.000 | 0.002 |
| Meta-epidemiology (narrow) | 0.000 | 0.000 |
| Meta-epidemiology (broad) | 0.000 | 0.000 |
| Bibliometrics | 0.000 | 0.000 |
| Science and technology studies | 0.001 | 0.001 |
| Scholarly communication | 0.001 | 0.000 |
| Open science | 0.000 | 0.001 |
| Research integrity | 0.000 | 0.000 |
| Insufficient payload (model declined to judge) | 0.002 | 0.000 |
Machine scores (provisional)
The two teacher heads of the student model, read on this work. A score orders the frame for review; it never asserts a category, and the validation status ships verbatim with every row.
Baseline scores from an immature model (maturity gate not passed, 7 training rounds). Scores rank; they never assert a category.
score_only:v0-immature-baseline · verbatim from the scoring run: score_only means the number may rank works, and no category label ships from itClassification
machine, unvalidatedMachine predicted; a candidate call from one source (direct Gemma or distilled Codex), not a consensus.
How this classification was reached, model by model and score by score, is at the end of the page under "How this classification was reached".