Exam 1

Question 1

What are the four basic sound sources involved in the production of speech?

Answer 1

• Voicing
• Noise (associated with whispering, voiceless fricatives and aspiration)
• Transients (associated with the burst of a plosive)
• Silence

Question 2

What happens during phonation?

Answer 2

Vocal cords open and close in a quasi-periodic fashion and as they do so air flows through the glottis. A greater amount of air will flow through a wider glottis and less air will flow through a narrower cycle.

Question 3

What is the aerostatics myoelastic theory of phonation?

Answer 3

This model describes voice production as a combination of muscle force (myo), tissue elasticity (elastic), and air pressures and flows ( namely from the lungs) (aerodynamics).

Question 4

What happens during the myoelastic aerodynamic process in the larynx?

Answer 4

• Medial compression holds the vocal folds together at midline
• air pressure beneath the folds (subglottal) begins to increase
• When this air pressure becomes strong enough, it overcomes the resistance of the closed vocal folds and pushes them apart or away from midline
• air passes through the vocal tract, setting the air within the tract into vibration
• due to folds elasticity - begin to recoil back
• as the folds begin to close, they form a narrow channel - air passing through this channel increases in velocity, so the air pressure decreases or becomes negative (BERNOULLI PRINCIPLE)
• Creates a vacuum - and brings vocal folds together (closed)
• process repeats it self

Question 5

What is fundamental frequency (F0)?

Answer 5

The rate of vibration of the vocal folds defined in terms of the number of vibrations (Hz) per second which occur during voicing.

Question 6

What is pitch?

Answer 6

The perceptual correlate of F0

Question 7

What is the glottal spectrum for an adult male?

Answer 7

100Hz

Question 8

What is the calculation for finding the harmonics?

Answer 8

Harmonic no*F0

Question 9

Why do men have lower F0’s than adolescent men?

Answer 9

• post-adolescent men have longer and thicker vocal folds

Question 10

Describe F0 of a man compared to a woman?

Answer 10

F0 is roughly half of that of a woman.

Question 11

What are formant frequencies?

Answer 11

The frequencies at which local energy peaks are allowed to pass through the supralarengeal vocal tract

Question 12

What determines formant frequencies

Answer 12

Length and shape of supralarengeal vocal tract

Question 13

How can you tell the difference between two vowels on a spectrograph?

Answer 13

They will have different formant frequencies

Question 14

What does the first formant signify?

Answer 14

Vowel height (inversely correlated).
The higher the vowel ( and tongue height), the lower the f1

Question 15

What does the second formant signify?

Answer 15

How far back the vowel is (more precisely the distance between the first and second formant frequencies). F2 - F1 is large for front vowels and small for back vowels.

Question 16

What does lip rounding do to the formant frequencies?

Answer 16

Lip rounding lowers F2 and F3

Question 17

What do formants higher that f3 tend to show!

Answer 17

No indication of vowel quality

Seem to be more speaker specific.

Question 18

Describe the acoustics of a nasalised vowel.

Answer 18

Greater formant bandwidths
Lower amplitude
Low frequency nasal formant
One or more anti formants

Question 19

What has a longer steady-state portion: tense or lax vowels?

Answer 19

Tense vowels

Question 20

What is a steady state portion?

Answer 20

Stretch of the Vowel during which the formant frequencies are relatively stable

Question 21

Describe the steady state portion of æ.

Answer 21

Is is a lax vowel but has a long duration

Question 22

What happens to tense vowels when they are flanked by consonants?

Answer 22

Into in and out is relatively symmetrical

Question 23

What happens to lax vowels when they are flanked by consonants?

Answer 23

Have slightly longer transitions into and longer transitions out of the vowel

Question 24

What languages have F3 as an important cue?

Answer 24

Dutch, French, German and Swedish

Question 25

Describe the volume of a vowel compared to a consonant?

Answer 25

Relatively loud

Question 26

What qualities does a nasal vowel show in comparison to a oral vowel?

Answer 26

Greater formant bandwidth
Lower overall amp
Low frequency nasal formant
One or more anti formants

Question 27

What are diphthongs?

Answer 27

Characterised by a change in formant pattern due to change in articulatory shape during their production

Question 28

Acoustic features of central approximants

Answer 28

Similar to vowels but formant pattern is slightly weaker (due to greater occlusion)
They have a shorter steady state portion in comparison to vowels
They have lower acoustic energy

Question 29

Acoustic characteristics of palatal approximants

Answer 29

Low f1
High f2 and f3
The transition in and out the approximants is quite pronounced (in terms of frequency range and duration. This depends on vowel
context.

Question 30

Acoustic features of labio velar approximant [w]

Answer 30

There is construction at bother places of articulation-the back of the tongue is bought closer to the velum and the lips are rounded.
F1 and f2 are low and close together. So f2-f1 will be small which means tongue is further forward.
F3 is around 2300 hz (similar to [u])

Question 31

If a vowel has a high tongue position, what happens to the f1 value?

Answer 31

Low

Question 32

If f2 is low what does this mean for the tongue position?

Answer 32

Further back j(t rue indication however is f2 value -f1 value)