Phonetics October 1-3, 2008

Phonetics 1.Experimental Phonetics a. Production b. Perception 2. Surveys/Interviews and Phonetics

1. Experimental Phonetics Use speech software to examine consonants and vowels

a. consonants (1)English stops, fricatives, and affricates come in pairs: [p/b], [t/d], [k/g], [f/v], [θ/ð], [s/z], [ ʃ / ʒ ], [t ʃ /d ʒ ]. (2) The difference between the members of each pair is usually described as one of voicing. (3) Voicing is the periodic vibration of the vocal folds. (4) However, a closer look at voiced stops in English using instrumental analysis shows that voicing may not be involved. (5) If voicing isn’t involved, then what is it?

b. Praat Praat is speech analysis software that is free and is often used to analyze speech It was developed in the Netherlands by Paul Boersma and David Weenink (praat is the Dutch word for ‘speak’), who have made it freely available to the linguistics community. Download it from here Download the sound file: pest.wav and best.wav

How to download files and measure sounds 1. Select Read in the Praat objects dialogue box. 2. Select Read from file from the drop-down dialogue box. Choose your file by clicking on it. The name of the file should appear in the window in the Praat objects dialogue box. 3. Select Edit; this will open up the Edit window. 4. Select Show spectrogram (or make sure that it’s selected). You shouldn’t need to adjust the spectrogram settings. 5. You can measure durations in the Edit window. Highlight the part of the spectrogram (or waveform) you want to measure and read the number at the bottom of the highlighted portion. It is conventional in work on phonetics to express durations in milliseconds.

pest.wav 1.Ways to measure voicing: pulses (go to “show pulses”), “voicing bar”, measure voice onset time (VOT) 2.How long is the VOT for the /p/ in pest?

best.wav How is the /b/ different from the /p/? VOT = 15 ms Practice with /t/ and /d/

a. consonants What do researchers use acoustic measurements of consonants for in research? What kinds of research could you do?

b. vowels

For consonants, duration differences indicate the difference between /p/ and /b/- -how do we see differences in vowels?

b. vowels We can see differences in formants Formant 2 Formant 1 Formant 3

What vowels have a high F1?

What vowels have a high F2?

F1 = Height F2 = frontedness

b. vowels

How to measure vowel formants

1.Place cursor in the middle of the vowel you are measuring. 2.Click on Formant, then “show formants”—you should see red lines indicating the formants 3.Click on Formant, then “formant listing” 4.This will give you the listing of F1 and F2 5.Do this for the file amvowels.wav