Fractal characterization of speech waveform graphs

Abstract

Mandelbrot's fractal geometry has provided a new qualitative and quantitative approach for understanding the complex shapes of nature. In this paper, the fractal structure of speech waveforms is studied at time scales where important phonetic and prosodic information reside. We have found, using methods commonly applied to complex shapes such as coastlines, that speech exhibits fractal characteristics. We have made measurements of the fractal dimension (D) for sentences and have found that D ∼ 1.66 with little change between speakers and sentences. © 1986.