PHONETICS

speech chain production

1. thought in a speaker’s brain

2. linguistic representation

3. phonetic representation

4. neural impulses

5. muscular activity

6. resultant movements of the speech organs

speech chain acoustic signal

1. sound emitted from lips and nose of speaker

2. sound travel through air as pressure wave

3. different sounds produce different variations in the pressure wave

speech chain perception

1. sound strikes the hearer’s ear

2. ear turns vibration/ mechanical energy back into neural impulses

3. brain interprets neural impulses to reconstitute the phonetic representation

4. words are understood from the phonetic representation

5. the original thought is understood

initiation and phonation

require moving air, this movement is initiated in the lungs

abduction of the arytenoids

1. Arytenoids swivel to draw vocal folds apart

2. no vibration

3. no voicing

4. no sound produced at the glottis

5. voiceless sound

adduction of the arytenoids

1. arytenoids swivel to draw vocal folds together

2. vocal folds vibrate

3. vocal folds produce voicing

4. buzzing sound is produced at the glottis

5. sound is voiced

Bernoulli effect

1. high pressure air from lungs forces vocal folds open

2. air flows through the open glottis (during the open phase of voicing = no voicing)

3. high velocity of the air = low pressure between vocal folds

4. low pressures with natural elasticity of vocal folds = they snap shut

5. pressure below glottis builds up again and creates a cycle

3 types of phonation

modal voice, breathy voice (vocal folds vibrate but do not close completely or have a longer open phase), creaky voice (vocal folds held tightly by arytenoids so only vibrate at the front and more time closed than open)

cardinal vowels

the 4 vowels at the extremities of the tongue-arching model

secondary cardinal vowels

4 vowels in intermediate positions on the tongue-arching model

conoids

speech sounds produced with an obstruction in the vocal tract

consonants

sounds that act as syllabic margins

3 parameters of consonant classification

place of articulation, manner of articulation, voicing

3 main patterns of voicing of word-initial stops

1. prevoiced stops = vocal folds vibrate throughout entire sound

2. short-lag/ voiceless unaspirated stop = vocal folds start vibrating as stop is release or shortly after (e.g. /b/ in ‘bat’)

3. long-lag/ voiceless aspirated stops = vocal folds start vibrating after release, the period between release and voicing onset is filled with aspiration (e.g. /p/ in ‘pat’)

word-final voiced stops

vocal folds vibrate throughout closure and all/ most of hold phase

word-final voiceless stops

voicing stops at the end of closure phase

pre-fortis clipping

vowel before a voiceless stop is likely to be shorter than one before a voiced stop in word-final position

4 types of sound waves

periodic, aperiodic, transient, quiescent

simple wave

air molecules vibrate at a single frequency

complex wave

air molecules vibrate at different frequencies at the same time

fourier analysis

decompose a complex sound wave into a simple sound wave

harmonic

each single sine wave that is part of a decomposed complex sound wave

the higher the value of F1

the lower the vowel height

the higher the value of F2

the more front the vowel

lip rounding

general lowering of formants

broad band spectrograms

show formants

narrow band spectrograms

show harmonics

source and filter theory

vocal folds create certain basic harmonics, some of which are more enhanced when the sound wave passes through the oral cavity (formants) because of its shape

the lower your voice is

the more harmonics you are fitting in a frequency range

formula for formants

the smaller the space of air in the oral cavity

the higher the frequency