Phonetics Chapter 2

Question 1

Phonetics

Answer 1

The study of the minimal units that make up a language.

Question 2

Articulatory Phonetics

Answer 2

The study of the production of speech sounds.

Question 3

Acoustic Phonetics

Answer 3

The study of the transmission and the physical properties of speech sounds.

Question 4

Auditory Phonetics

Answer 4

The study of the perception of speech sounds.

Question 5

Segments

Answer 5

A category of the speech stream that are the discrete units and can be further subdivided into the categories of consonants and vowels.

Question 6

Suprasegmentals

Answer 6

A category of the speech stream that “ride on top of” segments in that they often apply to entire strings of consonants and vowels (stress, tone, intonation).

Question 7

Articulation

Answer 7

Also known as articulatory gesture. The motion or positioning of some part of the vocal tract with respect to some other part of the vocal tract in the production of a speech sound.

Question 8

Stress

Answer 8

A suprasegmental feature. Stress, like tone, is a property of entire syllables, not segments, though the syllable, which is usually a vowel, carries the most of the information about stress.

Question 9

Periodic Wave

Answer 9

A sound wave that repeats at regular intervals.

Question 10

Spectogram

Answer 10

A graph that encodes three acoustic dimensions: the vertical axis represents frequency, and the horizontal axis represents time. The third is represented by a degree of darkness, which indicates the amount of acoustic energy present at a certain time and at a certain frequency.

Question 11

Aspiration

Answer 11

A period where air rushes out of the mouth after the release of the stop closure and before the onset of the vowel.

Question 12

Airstream Mechanism

Answer 12

Any of the various ways to produce a stream of moving air through the vocal tract for the production of speech sounds. Some major mechanisms are pulmonic, glottal, and velar; each may be produced with an egressive or an ingressive airstream.

Question 13

Glottalization

Answer 13

The production of a speech sound with a creaky voicer with a simultaneous glottal stop.

Question 14

Ejective

Answer 14

Consonant sound produced by compressing air in the mouth or pharynx while the glottis remains closed, and then releasing. It is also called a glottal or glottalized sound and is transcribed with an apostrophe following the segment involved.

Question 15

Velarized

Answer 15

A term describing a secondary articulation of a speech sound that is produced with the tongue body moving toward the velum.

Question 16

Length

Answer 16

The duration of a segment.

Question 17

Tone Language

Answer 17

Language that uses pitch contrast on syllables to signal a difference in word meaning.

Question 18

Compression

Answer 18

Physical phenomenon resulting in a higher concentration of air molecules within a given space.

Question 19

Harmonics

Answer 19

Overtone of the fundamental frequency of the vocal tract; multiple of the fundamental frequency.

Question 20

Formant

Answer 20

Resonant frequency that amplifies some groups of harmonics above others; appears as a dark band on a spectrogram.