Acoustic Phonetics

How speech sounds are physically

represented

Chapters 12 and 13

1
 Sound
• Energy
• Travels through a medium to reach the ear
• Compression waves

2
Information from Phonetics for Dummies. William F. Katz. “Making Waves: An Overview of Sound.” 2013.
Periodic waves
• Simple (sine; sinusoid)
• Complex (actually a
composite of many
overlapping simple
waves)

3
 Sinusoid waves
• Simple periodic motion from perfectly
oscillating bodies
• Found in in nature (e.g., swinging
pendulum, sidewinder snake trail, airflow
when you whistle)
• Sinusoids sound ‘cold’ (e.g. flute)

4
Let’s crank one out!

Pg. 175
5
Frequency - Tones

6
 Simple waves - key properties
• Frequency = cycles per sec (cps) = Hz
• Amplitude – measured in decibels (dB),
1/10 of a Bell
(Note: dB is on a log scale, increases by
powers of 10)

7
 Phase

• A measure of the
position along the
sinusoidal vibration
• These two waveforms
are slightly out of phase
(approx. 900 difference)
• Used in sound
localization

8
 Damping
• Loss of vibration due to friction

9
Quickie Quiz!
Q: What is
the
frequency
of this
wave ?
HINT: It
repeats
twice in 10
msec
10
 Answer:
• 200 Hz!

(2 cycles in .01 sec = 200 cps)

11
 Physical vs. perceptual
PHYSICAL PERCEPTUAL
• Fundamental frequency
(F0)  “Pitch”

• Amplitude/ Intensity  “Loudness”

• Duration  “Length”

12
 Speech
is here

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Image from Fetal Hydrocephalus. The Amazing Owen. “Great News from the Audiologist.” March 23, 2009. Accessed June 13, 2016. http://fetalhydrocephalus.com/hydro/SIblog/default.aspx?id=35&t=Great-news-from-the-Audiologist
 Complex periodic waves
• Results from
imperfectly oscillating
bodies
• Demonstrate simple
harmonic motion
• Examples - a vibrating
string, the vocal folds

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Frequency – Tones/ Adding

15
 Another example…..

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Waveforms - Male Vowels

17
Waveforms - Female Vowels

18
Complex periodic waves – cont’d
• Consists of a fundamental (F0) and
harmonics
• Harmonics (“overtones”) consist of energy
at integer multiples of the fundamental (x2,
x3, x4 etc…)

19
Harmonic series
• Imagine you
pluck a guitar
string and could
look at it with a
really precise
strobe light
• Here is what its
vibration will
look like

20
From complex wave to its components…
and the frequency spectrum
• Also known as a
“line spectrum”
• Here, complex
wave at the
bottom…
• ..is broken into its
component sin
waves shown at
the top

(complex wave) 21
 Fourier analysis
1768-1830

Complex wave  component sinusoids

Sound

Light
22
 Review of source characteristics
• Simple waves are a • Complex waves are
good way to learn found in nature for
about basic properties oscillating bodies that
of frequency, show simple harmonic
amplitude, and phase. motion (e.g., the vocal
• Examples include folds)
whistling; not really
found much in speech

23
Information from Phonetics for Dummies. William F. Katz. “Making Waves: An Overview of Sound.” 2013.
 Now let’s look at the filter
• In speech, the filter is the supralaryngeal
vocal tract (SLVT)
• The shape of the oral/pharyngeal cavity
determines vowel quality
• SLVT shape is chiefly determined by
tongue movement, but lips, velum and
(indirectly) jaw also play a role

24
 Resonance

• Reinforcement or shaping of frequencies as

a function of the boundary conditions
through which sound is passed
• FUN: Try producing a vowel with a paper
towel roll placed over your mouth!
• The ‘extra tube’ changes the resonance
properties

25
 Resonance / Formants

• The SLVT can be modeled as a kind of bottle with

different shapes… as sound passes through this
chamber it achieves different sound qualities
• The resonant peaks of speech that relate to vowel
quality are called formants.
• Thus, R1 = F1 (“first formant). R2 = F2 (“second
formant”) etc.
• F1 and F2 are critical determinants of vowel quality

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Input  SLVT  final output

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Vocal tract shape  formant frequencies

28
 Resonance – FOUR basic rules
• F1 rule – inversely related to jaw height. As the
jaw goes down, F1 goes up, etc.
• F2 rule – directly related to tongue fronting. As
the tongue moves forward, F2 increases.
• F3 rule – F3 drops with r-coloring
• Lip rounding rule – All formants are lowered by
liprounding (because lip protrusion lengthens the
vocal tract ‘tube’)

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Information from Phonetics for Dummies. William F. Katz. “Making Waves: An Overview of Sound.” 2013.
 Examples of resonance for
/i/, /ɑ/, /u/
• /i/ is made with /i/ /ɑ/ /u/
the tongue high
(thus, low F1)
and fronted
(high F2)
• /ɑ/ is made with
the tongue low
(high F1) and
back (low F2)

Download a (free) cool, interactive demo: https://www.phon.ucl.ac.uk/resource/vtdemo/

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 American English Vowels

(Assmann & Katz, 2000)

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Tables from Phonetics for Dummies. William F. Katz. “Making Waves: An Overview of Sound.” 2013.
 F2 x F1 plot
American English Vowels

• Peterson & Barney, 1952

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Figure from Phonetics for Dummies. William F. Katz. “Making Waves: An Overview of Sound.” 2013.
 Chap 13
• Reading a sound spectrogram

33
 The sound spectrograph
• Invented in the 1940s
• First called ‘visible speech’
• Originally thought to
produce a “speech
fingerprint” (?)
• We now know speech
perception is far more
complicated and
ambiguous..

34
 Basics of spectrogram operation

• Original systems used

bandpass filters
• Accumulated energy was
represented by a dark
image burned onto
specially-treated paper
• Nowadays, performed
digitally using variety of
algorithms (e.g., LPC =
linear predictive coding)

35
Relating line spectrum to
spectrogram ~ “video”

~“snapshot”

F3

F1
1

36
 Sample of word “spectrogram”

• Pg. 192

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Figure from Phonetics for Dummies. William F. Katz. “Reading a Sound Spectrogram.” 2013.
 Vowel basics
• Here is /i ɑ i ɑ / produced with level pitch

F2

F1
Voice bar

38
Spectrogram from Ladefoged and Johnson, A course in phonetics
 Let’s find some vowels!

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Figure from Phonetics for Dummies. William F. Katz. “Reading a Sound Spectrogram.” 2013.
 Here they are:

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Figure from Phonetics for Dummies. William F. Katz. “Reading a Sound Spectrogram.” 2013.
 Consonants – formant transitions

• An
example of
an F1
transition
for the
syllable
/da/

41
Figure from Phonetics for Dummies. William F. Katz. “Reading a Sound Spectrogram.” 2013.
American English vowels in /b_d/ context

• TOP ROW (front vowels): “bead bid bade bed bad”

• BOTTOM ROW (back vowels) “bod bawd bode buhd booed”
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Spectrograms from Ladefoged and Johnson, A course in phonetics
 Stops/ formant transitions

• Spectrograms of “bab” “dad” and “gag”

• Labials – F2 point down, alveolars F2 point to ~1700-1800 Hz, velars “pinch” F2
and F3 together
• Note: bottom-most fuzzy is the voice bar!

43
Spectrogram from Ladefoged and Johnson, A course in phonetics
 Voicing

(voice of WK) 44
 Fricatives

• Top row: /f/, theta, s, esh,

• Bottom row: /v/, ethe, z, long z
• Distribution of the spectral noise is the key here!
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Spectrogram from Ladefoged and Johnson, A course in phonetics
 The fricative /h/

• Commonly excites all the formant cavities

• May look slightly different in varying vowel contexts
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Spectrogram from Ladefoged and Johnson, A course in phonetics
 Nasal stops

• Spectrograms of “dinner dimmer dinger”

• Marked by “zeroes” or formant regions with little energy
• Can also result in broadening of formant bandwidths
(fuzzying the edges)
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Spectrogram from Ladefoged and Johnson, A course in phonetics
 Approximants

/ɹ/ - very low third formant, just above F2

/l/ - formants in the neighborhood of 250, 1200, and 2400 Hz;
less apparent in final position.
Higher formants considerable reduced in intensity
Spectrogram from Ladefoged and Johnson, A course in phonetics
48
 Stops versus tap/flap

“a toe” “a doe” “otto”

•For full stops, there is about 100 ms of silence
•For tap, only about 10-30 ms
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Spectrogram from Ladefoged and Johnson, A course in phonetics
 Pseudo-colored example

• Here is an American English /æ/ (male)

• “Hot” areas (in green/yellow/red) have more energy

Wavesurfer
50
Some “tough cases”….

ALS- (Healthy male control)

Amotryophic lateral
sclerosis
(notice loss of formant
frequency quality) 51
 Women and children

(High F0 can cause problems estimating formants)

52