Speech Science Flashcards
What is damping?
when a source of energy is reduced or gone
What determines the intensity at each harmonic in vowel production?
vocal tract
What are harmonics?
energy components of sound, considered the source of sound and is produced by the vocal folds
How are vowels perceived?
by the spacing of the formants
How are vowel differences perceived?
the relationship between formants
What does the brick-wall filtering do?
removes all the energy from the Nyquist frequency, thereby removing all unwanted frequencies in an audio sample
What is a consonant?
a speech sound produced by changing an air stream in a particular way
What is a vowel?
a speech sound produced with an open vocal tract with no points of constriction. It is voiced and its resonant formants are shaped by the vocal tract. May be called syllabics because they carry syllables
What is the onset?
initial consonant of a syllable
What is the nucleus?
the vowel in the motor unit or syllable (E.g., the “a” in apple)
What is the coda?
ending consonant of a syllable (e.g., /t/ in “cat”)
What is an open syllable?
A word that ends in a vowel
What is a closed syllable?
A word that ends in a consonant
What is the difference between phonemic and phonetic?
phonemic refers to the idealization production of a speech sound (slashes are used for that); phonetic refers to an individual’s production of a speech sounds and brackets are used for that
What is speech science?
the study of speech perception, the physical aspects of speech, and how it is produced
What is acoustics?
study of the physical aspects of speech
What is speech perception?
study of how speech is understood
What is phonetics?
the study of the production and perception of speech sounds
What is an allophone?
variations of a phoneme that does not change the word’s meaning (e.g., /t/ in top is different from the /t/ in stop)
What is behavioral definition of language and speech?
verbal behaviors shaped and maintained by social communities
What is a cognate pair?
speech sounds that have the same place and manner but differ in voicing (e.g., /p/ and /b/)
What is coarticulation?
the change a speech sound goes through in connected speech (e.g., “th” in them may sound different in the phrase “catch them”; results in allophonic variations of a speech sound
What is assimilation?
causes a sound to change to a different sound
What are the four functions that matter in speech?
respiration, phonation, resonation, and articulation
What is the purpose of suprasegmentals?
to add purpose and variety to speech
What are formants?
the vibrations of the air from the vocal folds in the vocal tract at different pitches
How is sound produced?
disturbance of molecules in a given medium
What are sound waves?
particles moving in a medium that contain expansions and contractions
What is impedance?
acoustic, mechanical, or electrical resistance to motion or sound transmission
What is compression?
air molecules are dense because of vibrations
What is rarefaction?
thinning of air molecules because of vibrations going back to equilibrium
What is a pure tone?
a tone with a single frequency
Vibrations repeat themselves in cycles or
hertz
What two features of a medium affect the transmission of sound?
mass (Density) and elasticity; the bigger the medium, the more force is needed to transmit the sound
What aspect of sound does the medium affect?t
the speed of sound, but not its frequency
What is amplitude?
the magnitude or intensity of sound, which is perceived as its loudness
What is frequency?
number of cycles of vibration per second; it is related to the sensation of pitch
What is intensity?
sound pressure or energy that is transmited over an area, measures in dB
What is a spectrogram?
a visual representation of sound frequencies across a span of time
Since resonance and standing waves include constrictions at an antinode or node that may have an effect on formant frequencies, which of the following statements is true?
Constriction at a node raises the formant frequencies
What is pressure?
when force is applied to surface mass per unit area
What is a pure tone?
a tone that contains a single frequency
What is simple harmonic motion?
tone of single frequency that repeats itself
What is a complex tone?
combination of two or more pure tone with different frequencies
Repeated and predictable vibrations that make up a complex tone are _______, where unpredictable vibrations that make up a complex tone are ________
periodic; aperiodic
What is the frequency of vibration?
number of times a cycle of vibration repeats itself.
What is the velocity?
amount of molecular displacement per unit of time
How is sound generated?
through displacement, a change in the molecular positions which causes a transfer of energy
What is natural frequency?
frequency that the source of sound normally vibrates; this is determined by the source’s mass and stiffness
Increased mass leads to ______ frequency, whereas increased stiffness leads to ________ frequency
decreased; increased
What is fundamental frequency?
lowest frequency of a periodic wave; it is the first harmonic; it has the greatest wavelength
What is an octave?
it’s an indication of the intervals between two frequencies
What is amplitude?
magnitude and direction of displacement; it is reflected by intensity. The greater the amplitude, the louder the signal
What is intensity?
sound pressure or the amount of energy transmitted per second over an area of one square meter measured in DB
What is density?
amount of mass per unit volume
What is force?
product of mass and acceleration
What is pressure?
amount of force per unit area
What is reflection?
phenomenon of sound waves traveling back after hitting an object, with no change in the speed of propagation
What is refraction?
bending of a sound wave due to change in its speed of propagation; this happens when sound moves from one medium to another
What is resonance?
modification of the laryngeal tone by mainly the nasal and oral cavities
What is a period?
amount of time needed for a cycle to be completed
What is pitch?
variations in the frequency of vibration
What is loudness?
a perceptual sensation related to amplitude or intensity of a sound
What is a sound spectrograph?
an instrument for speech sound analysis
What are formants?
resonances of vocal tracts, they have frequencies and are affected by cavity features such as tongue positioning and mouth opening
What are formant transitions?
rapid changes in the resonant (formant) frequency when the speech sound production transitions from one sound to the next
What is voice onset time?
time between the release of the stop consonant and the beginning of the vowel
What is voice termination time?
time required to stop vocal activity
What is rarefraction?
reduction of a density of an item
What is reverberation?
time required for a sound wave to reduce by 60 dB after leaving its source.
What kind of effect does resonance have on speech?
It does not add energy to the speech signal; rather, it results from the speech signal
How is the first formant (F1) lowered?
a constriction near a volume velocity maximum
How is the first formant (F1) raised?
a constriction near a volume velocty minimum
When do resonant frequencies decrease?
the area of constriction is located at an antinode
