# Within and Across-Language Comparison of Vocal Emotions in Mandarin and English
## 1 Introduction  
Human speech is believed to be a reliable means of conveying a speaker's emotional state [1]. In the past, researchers looked for acoustic cues that could clearly distinguish different vocal emotions (e.g., [2; 3; 4], among many others)--mostly anger, fear, happiness and sadness from a core set of basic emotions [5]. Much of the previous research is limited to prosodic cues including fundamental frequency (f0), duration and intensity [2; 6], which are considered to be sufficient to differentiate vocal emotions [7]. However, studies focusing on emotions such as anger and happiness report similar prosodic patterns with high mean pitch, fast speech rate and high intensity [2], meaning that it is difficult to distinguish these two emotions using only prosodic cues. Moreover, evidence from research on emotional speech synthesis and recognition demonstrates that multiple cues in addition to f0, duration and intensity are necessary for the acoustic realization of emotional speech [8; 9]. Thus, the understanding of the acoustic mechanisms underlying vocal emotions remains incomplete based on prosodic cues. Recent trends in the acoustic analysis of vocal emotions have led to examinations of phonation-related spectral cues. [PERSON] et al. (2011) [10] investigated the mapping between phonation cues and emotion dimensions in French speech. Results indicated three underlying components--tension, perturbation and voicing frequency--which were claimed to be related to emotion dimensions of arousal,potency and the ability to control respectively. [PERSON] et al. (2013) [PERSON] et al. (2013) proposed a set of spectral and f0 cues which was named BID measurements to test the size code hypothesis using synthetic speech. Results revealed that listeners could infer emotions from the changes of cues caused by the physiological structure of a speaker. Similar ideas are also found in References [PERSON] et al. (2014) [PERSON] et al. (2014) [PERSON] et al. (2014) highlighted the importance of phonation cues in differentiating vocal emotions in Mandarin. By adding phonation-related spectral cues in a multi-dimensional scaling acoustic space, different emotions were separated clearly. Although these studies have enriched the knowledge of vocal expression of emotions, few attempts have been made to analyse different roles played by prosodic cues and phonation cues in differentiating vocal emotions. Another important issue is whether the vocal expression of emotions is universal across languages or language-specific. Many research studies attempted to untangle this debate through cross-cultural perception experiments by asking subjects from different language backgrounds to identify the underlying emotions expressed by speakers from either the same or a different language background (e.g., [PERSON] et al. (2009); [PERSON] and [PERSON] (2010); [PERSON] et al. (2011); [PERSON] and [PERSON] (2012)). Results showed that listeners could successfully recognize vocal emotions expressed in non-native languages with no great variation in perception except for an in-group advantage when judging emotions expressed in their native languages [PERSON] et al. (2009). Based on the evidence in perception studies, vocal expression of emotions seems to be universal across languages. Unlike perception, a limited number of studies have investigated the cross-language vocal expression of emotions through production experiments. This may due to the difficulties in controlling the elicitation of emotions in different languages and in designing experimental paradigms. Among the few studies, [PERSON] et al. (2009) [PERSON] et al. (2011) compared acoustic parameters of six vocal emotions in English, German, Hindi and Arabic. Results showed that mean pitch, pitch range and speech rate contributed in a similar way to differentiate vocal emotions across languages. In contrast, [PERSON] et al. (2008) [PERSON] et al. (2008) [PERSON] et al.