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IAFPA (International Association of Forensic Phonetics and Acoustics)

Definition

The professional organisation for forensic phoneticians, founded in 1991 following the collapse of the voiceprint paradigm. Maintains a code of conduct, annual conference, and publishes the International Journal of Speech, Language and the Law.

Related terms

Bharatiya Sakshya Adhiniyam 2023 (BSA 2023)
India's evidence law replacing the Indian Evidence Act 1872, governing admissibility of expert testimony (Section 39) including forensic phonetic evidence. Does not...
Code-Switching
Shifting between different registers or even different languages within an interaction, often as a signal of role or authority. An interviewer who...
DyViS Corpus
The Dynamic Variability in Speech corpus (Nolan et al., 2009), a UK English speaker database collected under conditions designed to simulate forensic...
Formant
A resonance peak in the vocal tract filter; F1 and F2 together characterise vowel quality (height and frontness), while F3 and higher...
Lexical Tone
A tone system in which F0 patterns carry word-meaning distinctions. Mandarin (four tones) and Punjabi (three tones) are the forensically most common...
Long-Term Average Spectrum (LTAS)
The averaged spectral energy distribution across a long recording segment, capturing the habitual spectral envelope of a speaker's voice. Useful as a...
Praat
Open-source acoustic analysis software developed by Paul Boersma and David Weenink at the University of Amsterdam, used by virtually all forensic phoneticians...
Speaker Profiling
The use of phonetic and linguistic features to infer a speaker's regional origin, language background, age, sex, or social group from a...
Voice Onset Time (VOT)
The interval between the release of a stop consonant closure and the onset of vocal fold vibration for the following vowel. VOT...

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