Final Lecture 16: March 21 Flashcards
(41 cards)
what is Phoneme:
a unit of sound that distinguishes one word from another in a particular language (e.g.: kill vs kiss).
get around confusing differences between sound and spelling, we use what
the International Phonetic Alphabet (IPA).
how is Speech production done
respiration
phonotation
Articulation
how does Respiration work
the diaphragm pushes air out of lungs, through the trachea, up to the larynx
what is Phonation:
The process through which vocal folds are made to vibrate when air pushes out of the lungs.
- at the larynx, the air must pass through two vocal folds (a.k.a. vocal cords)
- more tension will cause more high-pitched sounds - small vocal folds, high-pitched voices
(chidren < women < men) - The spectrum of sound passing through the vocal folds is a harmonic spectrum.
what is Articulation:
The act or manner of producing a speech sound using the vocal tract
where is The vocal tract
is the area above the larynx (oral + nasal tract).
Humans can change the shape of their vocal tract by manipulating what
their jaws, lips, tongue body, tongue tip, and velum (soft palate) – this is what we call “articulation”
Resonance characteristics createdhow
by changing size and shape of vocal tracts to affect sound frequency distribution
changing size and shape of vocal tracts will increase/ decrease what
energy at different frequencies
Peaks in the speech spectrum are calledwhat
formants
Formants are labelledhow
by number, from lowest to
highest (F1, F2, F3).
Formants have higher frequencies for who
people who have shorter vocal tracts. It is the relationship between the formants that counts
Most of the time, the first three formants are sufficient to identify what
the phoneme
The spectrum of speech sounds changes over time.
- Spectrograms help represent what
that third dimension
time
what are the points to Spectrograms
x: time
y: frequency
color: energy (amplitude
Speech production is very fast: 10–15 consonants and vowels per second (can be doubled if you talk fast).
- Experienced talkers position tongue, etc. in anticipation of what
next consonant or vowel, causing coarticulation.
Coarticulation will cause what
overlap in articulatory or speech patterns.
Perception doesn’t reflect the actual mixture of visual input, but is biased towards what
pre- existing categories, i.e. perception is « all-or- none ».
Perception doesn’t reflect the actual mixture of visual input, but is biased towards pre- existing categories, i.e. perception is « all-or- none ». This causes what
This causes pairs of within-category stimuli to be perceived as more similar than they really, and pairs of between-category stimuli to be perceived as more different than they really are.
Four-day-old French babies prefer hearingfrench or russian
French over Russian
Sound distinctions are specific to wha
various languages. For example, ‘r’
and ‘l’ are not distinguished in Japanese
Infants begin filtering out irrelevant acoustics when
long before they start to say speech sounds.
For instance, english-speaking infants <10 months can distinguish between two types of “t” sounds that are different phonemes in Hindi, but loose that ability after 10 months, while Hindi infants still continue to make the distinction
what is the Motor theory” of speech perception
Motor processes used to produce speech sounds are used in reverse to understand the acoustic speech signal
