Lecture 9- Intro To Speech Production Flashcards
What are some challenges of speech production
- No clear gaps between words
- Co-articulation
- Accent, gender and speaking rate
- Time constraints
What is co-articulation
Changes in speech articulation of the current segment due to neighbouring speech
(Same word sounds different in different parts of a sentence)
How many words can we hear per minute
200
Examples of time constraints
- Words per minute
- Sound is fleeting
- “Now or never bottle neck”
What is the process of a speaker
Linguistic level-> Physiological level-> acoustic level
What is the process of a listener
Acoustic level-> Physiological level-> Linguistic level
Physical process of producing speech
- Lungs push air up the trachea (windpipe
- Air vibrates the vocal cords in the larynx (voice box)
Sounds from the vocal cords are shaped by
The supralaryngeal vocal tract
What is included in the supralaryngeal vocal tract
- Pharynx
- Oral cavity
- Nasal cavity
Consonants are produced with
A constriction in the vocal tract
What are the 3 places of articulation
- Labial
- Alveolar
- Velar
Constants are classified according to which 3 main features
- Manner
- Voicing
- Place of articulation
What are examples of stop consonants with voicing
B, D, G
What are examples of stop consonants without voicing
P, T, K
What are the 3 types of manner
- Stop
- Fricative
- Nasal
What are examples of fricative consonants without voicing
F, S
What are examples of fricative consonants with voicing
V, Z
What are examples of nasal consonants
M, N
What are sound waves
Periodic displacement of air molecules, creating increases and decreases in air pressure
What is amplitude of a sound wave
Related to loudness
What is the period of a sound wave
Inversely related to frequency, important cue to pitch
What does a spectrogram graph show
How sound amplitude caries as a function of time and frequency
What does the dark grey represent on a spectrogram
Large amplitude
What does the light grey represent on a spectrogram
Small amplitude
Why are spectrograms useful
Because the ear splits sound by frequency so better captures the information available to the brain
What is the ‘source’ of speech
Vocal cords in the larynx (voice box)
What is the ‘filter’ for speech
The supralaryngeal vocal tract
What does the source-filter theory believe the filter is important for
Producing different speech sounds (phonemes)
What does the source-filter theory believe the source is important for
- Vocal pitch
- Intonation
What does the source-filter theory believe filtering appears as
Bands of energy at certain frequencies called ‘formants’
What does the source-filter theory believe is the most important for speech intelligibility
The lowest 3 formant frequencies
Changing from high to low vowels causes
First formants (F1) frequency to increase
Changing from front to back vowels causes
Second formants (F2) frequency to decrease
F2 and F3 are important cues for
Identifying consonants
What is categorical perception
The tendency to perceive gradual sensory changes in a discrete fashion
What are the three hallmarks of categorical perception
- Abrupt change in identification at phoneme boundary
- Discrimination peak at phoneme boundary
- Discrimination predicted from identification
Source-filter theory describes speech production as 2
Independent components with distinct perceptual correlates
Speech sounds are perceived in a
Categorical fashion, even if they are acoustically ambiguous
Speech perception is strongly influenced by
The context in which they are heard
