Vowels

Question 1

Vowels shaping

Answer 1

The top-most point of the tongue is used to shape the phonemes

High-low positioning;
- High: /i/ as in beet and /u/ as in boot
- Mid: /e/ as in bed
- Low: /ae/ as in bat

Front-back positioning
- front: /i/ as in beet /3/ as in bed
- central: /e/ as in sofa
- back: /u/ as in boot /a/ as in bought

Question 2

Sonority

Answer 2

the average loudness of the pronounced phonemes. A continuum from consonants to vowels.

Sonority scale:
a - i - l - n - f - tf - k

Question 3

Phone

Answer 3

Individual production of a phoneme. Varies due to
- age
- sex
- dialect
- speaking rate
- emotion

Question 4

Acoustic variation

Answer 4

Phones show acoustic variation, meaning the speech sounds are perceived depending on speaker/context/language.

Question 5

Categorical perception

Answer 5

Challenge created by the variation in phones:
- Difficult to identify/establish recognising criteria
- Ambiguity in segmentation

Question 6

Indexicals

Answer 6

Linguistic elements that acquire their meaning based on the context in which they’re used. Acoustic variation allows you to recognize words in context

Question 7

distributed representation in the brain

Answer 7

allows the brain to encode the complex acoustic information contained in speech sounds and to recognize phonemes even when they are presented in different contexts or with variability

Superior temporal brain areas (STG, STS) show distributed coding

Question 8

Newborns speech perception

Answer 8

Use high-amplitude sucking based habituation studies in 4 days old.

Better at discriminating vowel changes compared to consonant changes

2 mo can discriminate equally