Acoustic Phonetics

Vowels

Reading Spectrograms: Words 1

Consonants

Reading Spectrograms: Words 2

• Lips, teeth, tongue, vocal chords, larynx and pharynx are key manipulators
• The epiglottis covers the airway so food doesn't get into your lungs
  
• The vocal tract: the vocal chords through the mouth and tongue influences the different sounds that you can make
  
  • air is forced from your lungs through the vocal chords
    
• vowel sounds have unique signatures in that they have a different formant structure
  
• formant - each of several prominent bands of frequency that determine the phonetic quality of a vowel
  
  • ​there is a lot of speech perception related to formants
    
  • formants are where the frequencies are enhanced
    
• ​plosive - there is closure and then a build up and release
  
• frcatives - air is constantly passing through, create friction
  
• affricate - combination sound, e.g. d going into s is the "ja" sound
  
• the different tongue positions give rise to a different spectra of formant
• patterns are the same but vary from individual to individual
• the vocal tract changes shape by changing the shape of the tonge
• vowel sounds are smooth
  • tongue height, high, medium, low tongue position, front, mid back, lip rounding close, open
• consonant sounds have to make a constriction in your vocal tract which will allow you to stop your air flow for a brief period creating turbulence with that process
• consonants can be distinguished in terms of 
  • voicing - whether or not vocal folds are vibrating in the larynx
  • place - site of constriction or closure in the vocal tract
    • bilatial, alveolar, dental, palatal
  • manner - type of constriction (plosive, fricative, affricate, nasal approximates)
    • plosive, fricative, affricate, continuants (narrower of that as a vowel but not as much as a consonaant)
• the vocal tract changes as a function
• speech pattern consists of various complex processes, vowel sounds, consonant sounds
• the difference between male and female vocal chords is between 100Hz, have a different fundamental frequency, vocal fold stays the same but the shape changes it
• phonemes - english contains about 40 phonemes
• spectrogram - representation of the frequency and intensity of the speech signal over time
• harmonic and a formant - harmonics are related to fundamental frequency of vocal chord vibration
  • you have a fundamental and then next harmonic
  • formant is representative of where in the vocal tract the sound is resonated, not the fundamental frequency
  • some of the darker areas of the spectrograms are the formants