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