### Pitch Range Perception from a Brief Speech Input  
Over the years, there have been ample studies to explore how human listeners identify the pitch range of a given speaker. Similarly to the speaker-normalization mechanism in vowel perception [30; 31], pitch perception also involves speaker normalization [32; 33; 34]. That is, a sufficient exposure to the speech samples of a given speaker (i.e., with a precursor phase) leads listeners to estimate the F0 range of the speaker so as to facilitate pitch perception in subsequent speech input. All the above-reviewed methods of F0 range estimation coincide with the general assumption that a precursor phase is necessary for estimating the underlying F0 range of a particular speaker. Nevertheless, studies on tone recognition found that lexical tones in tone languages could be well recognized without any context information or familiarity with the speaker. This tendency has been reported both in Mandarin [6; 35; 36] and in Cantonese studies [8; 34]. Specifically, tone recognition can even be accomplished from a part of the syllable without the presence of a complete F0 profile. For example, [37] showed that from a \"silent-center\" Mandarin syllable in which the majority of F0 contour was missing, tone could be recognized as accurately as from a complete syllable. [6] found that from a fricative and the initial six glottal voicing periods of a Mandarin syllable, native listeners could still distinguish high-onset tones from low-onset tones accurately. Similar results were also observed in non-tone languages. For example, [3] reported that given an English speech sample as short as 500 ms, listeners were able to identify the pitch level within the speaker's F0 range with some accuracy. These studies indicate that the pitch range of an unfamiliar speaker can be roughly inferred by human listeners from a brief speech input. Because a brief speech cannot cover the speaker's full range of F0 variation, it is speculated that there are cues of pitch rangeother than F0 in speech signals. Speech signals encode the characteristics of vocal folds vibration (source) and vocal tract articulation (filter) [38], both of which reflect speaker traits such as gender, health condition, height and weight [9; 18; 19; 20; 21; 22; 23; 24; 25]. The source and filter characteristics are not fully independent from each other but are correlated to some extent on the physiological basis. For example, due to the general gender difference in body size, male speakers tend to have both longer, thicker vocal folds and longer vocal tracts than female speakers; the former will result in a generally lower F0 in males and the latter will lead to generally lower formant frequencies in males [9; 38]. Thus, when F0 is not adequately accessible, listeners may estimate or infer pitch range partly from the filter information. When exposed to a brief speech perceived as from a female speaker, listeners would expect a higher F0 range. In the literature on speech and singing studies, modulation of spectral features has shown effects on pitch perception [39; 40; 41; 42]. Among others, spectral locus [40], spectral centroid [42], and voice quality defined as the variability in the spectrum [3; 7; 43] have proven effects. Especially, the covariation between F0 and voice quality has been reported, e.g., a creaky voice or vocal fry is usually associated with the lower F0 range of a speaker, whereas a tense voice or falsetto is usually associated with the higher F0 range [7] (p. 201). Higher levels of jitter and shimmer are sometimes associated with the lower F0 [44; 45]. Although phonation type or voice quality facilitates pitch perception, only a few specific parameters have been found to correlate directly with the perceptual judgment of pitch range. [7] reported that spectral balance tilt was an effective cue for pitch range, whereas other studies [3; 4; 6] showed that H1-H2, H1-A3, H1-H3 and F1 bandwidth had at most modest effects on the perceptual judgment of pitch range.