Chapter 14: Speaking and Listening - Speech Sounds Flashcards
Speech chain
A series of speech sounds a speaker communicates.
Phonetics
The sub-discipline of linguistics that studies the physical process of speaking and listening, as well as the physical properties of the speech signal.
Pharynx
Upper part of the throat.
Oral cavity
Inside the mouth.
Nasal cavity
Inside the nose.
Vocal tract
The pathway that the air passes through in speech production.
Vocal folds
The lower pair of the vocal cords which are used to produce vocal sounds.
Auricle
Outer ear
The outside of the ear.
External auditory canal
The part of the ear though which sound vibrations are channeled.
Tympanic membrane
Eardrum.
Middle ear
Consists of three hearing bones: hammer, anvil and stirrup.
Oval window
The part of the ear though which sound vibrations are conducted by the stirrup.
Cochlea
Part of the inner ear where frequency analysis takes place.
Acoustic nerve
The part of the ear though which results are conveyed to the brain for further interpretation.
Phonetic transcription
Representing sounds and sound strings in written form.
Vowels
Speech sounds that are produced without any narrowing of the vocal tract.
Consonant
Speech sounds that are produced by creating some type of narrowing somewhere in the vocal tract.
Pulmonic consonants
Consonants for which the airstream that is used to pronounce them is produced in the lungs.
Non-pulmonic consonants
Consonants that are produced by using an airstream produced by the larynx or the tongue.
Manner of articulation
The degree and nature of the narrowing involved in the production of consonants.
Place of articulation
Concerns the part of the roof of the mouth where the narrowing occurs.
Plosives
Consonants produced by building up air pressure inside the mouth though complete closure and letting the air escape in one go.
Fricatives
Consonants produced by an almost complete narrowing of the vocal tract and then an expulsion of air though the narrow passage.
Affricates
Consonants that start out as a plosives and end as a fricative.
Nasals
Consonants that are produced by letting the air escape though the nose.
Laterals
Consonants produced by letting the air flow along the sides of the tongue instead of the center.
Trills
Consonants that are produced by vibration of part of the tongue against a place of articulation.
Taps
Flaps
Consonants that are produced by a single short closure.
Approximants
Consonants that are produced with almost no narrowing of the vocal tract.
Voicing
Whether consonants are produced by letting the vocal folds vibrate.
Glottis
The space between the vocal folds.
Voiced consonants
Consonants produced with vibration of the vocal folds.
Voiceless consonants
Consonants that are produced without vibration of the vocal folds.
Clicks
Sounds that are produced by sucking air into the mouth.
Voiced implosives
Sounds that are produced by combining a closure of the vocal tract with a lowering of the larynx.
Ejectives
Sounds that are produced by combining a closure of the vocal tract with rapid raising of the larynx.
Diphthongs
The combination of two vowels.
Diphones
Units the size of two half sounds.
Speech synthesis
When speech is generated by a computer.
Grapheme-to-phoneme conversion
When written text is being converted to speech sounds.
Automatic speech recognition
The interpretation of spoken text by a computer.
Speech signal
Sounds that a speaker communicates.
