The end of vowels +

The beginning of fricatives

November 19, 2012

The Road Ahead

Today: finish vowels and begin fricatives
Formant plotting + vowel production exercises is due on
Wednesday!
This Wednesday: continue the discussion of fricatives
On Friday: fricative transcription
As for right now: lets measure some formants!
to prove a point: everybodys vowel space is different.

Source/Filter Summary
Sound source

Sound filter

vocal folds

vocal tract

fundamental frequency

resonant frequencies (formants)

F0

F1, F2, F3

harmonics

standing waves

pitch of voice

vowel quality
in a (wide-band) spectrogram:

vertical striations

horizontal dark bands

a musical analogy:
strings

body (of guitar, violin, etc.)

More Music

With (most) musical instruments, we can only change

the frequency of the sound source.

Timbre is a musical term for the quality of a sound.

I.e., its characteristic resonances.

E.g., compare the same note played by a trumpet

vs. a violin.

In speech, you can independently change both source

and filter frequencies at the same time.

Like changing the size of a piano

As you press different keys on the keyboard.

This makes the acoustics of speech at least twice as

complex as the acoustics of music.

Formant-Reading Tip #1
Another distinction between source and filter
characteristics is formant bandwidth.
Harmonics are exact:
integer multiples of source frequency
Resonances are less exact:
theyre centered around an optimal frequency, but
other frequencies may resonate to some extent, too.
Hence: formants can appear to merge in wide-band
spectrograms.

Bandwidth

Bandwidth

Merged Formants

F2

F1

Another Problem: Dynamics

F2

F2
F1

F1
hod

vowel formants are typically not steady-state for very long

Source/Filter (again)
So far, weve considered the following source/filter
configuration:
source: voicing at the vocal folds
filter: the resonating vocal tract
Q: What would happen if we changed the source by:
Opening the glottis (i.e., not voicing)
And increasing airflow so that
there is some audible turbulence as the air passes
through the vocal folds?
A: Wed get something called whispering (technical term)

Whispering Example

whispered

had

voiced

Glottal Fricatives
The sound source of whispering is the turbulence that
airflow creates as it passes through the vocal folds.
Glottal fricatives
The IPA lists two sounds as glottal fricatives
voiceless: [h]
voiced:
The filter of both sounds is the same vocal tract
shapes that we find in vowels.
In a sense, [h] is a voiceless vowel

[h] in different vowel contexts

heed

had

[h] in different vowel contexts

Voiced /h/

In English, /h/ often surfaces as breathy voiced

appears between two vowels.

ahead

head

when it

Turbulence Acoustics
The source of fricative sounds is aerodynamic
turbulence
aperiodic
random
Aperiodic sounds are noisy
Their pressure values vary randomly over time
waveform snippet of aperiodic white noise:

White Noise Spectrum

Recall: white light is what you get when you combine all
visible frequencies of the electromagnetic spectrum
White noise is so called because it has an unlimited
range of frequency components

White Noise Spectrogram

Fricative Filtering
The sound source of fricatives resembles white noise.
but this aperiodic noise may be filtered by the
vocal tract in the same way that voiced vowels are.
Ex: [h] tends to take on the spectral characteristics of its
surrounding vowels
[h] just replaces the voicing source with an
aperiodic sound source.
= coarticulation

Fricative Place of Articulation

A fricatives place of articulation is where, in the vocal
tract, its turbulence noise is made.
Fricatives may be produced at essentially any place of
articulation.

At different places of articulation, fricatives will have:

Different filters
based on the area and shape of the vocal tract
in front of the obstruction of the airflow
Different sound sources
based on the flow of air through the obstruction

Glottals, Epiglottals,
and Pharyngeals
Glottal fricatives: [h]
Epiglottal fricatives:
Pharyngeal fricatives:
Note: try not to confuse the symbols for the:
voiced epiglottal fricative
voiceless epiglottal stop
And also not the symbols for the:
voiced pharyngeal fricative
glottal stop

Agul
Glottals, epiglottals and pharyngeals contrast in the
Caucasian language Agul.

Uvular Fricatives

Uvular Fricative Symbols

Peter says:
Uvular fricatives contrast with pharyngeals and
glottals in one dialect of Hebrew.

Palatals and Velars

Palatal and Velar Symbols

<-- Peter says

Possible confusion #1:
voiceless palatal fricative

[]

voiceless palatal stop

[c]

Possible confusion #2:

voiced palatal fricative
voiced palatal stop
Possible confusion #3:

Greek

Coronal Fricatives

Peter says:
The coronal fricative landscape is very complex.
Next time well look in detail at how coronal
fricatives are produced in:
English
Chinese
Polish

Toda

Toda is spoken in southern India.

Toda Mid-Sagittal Diagrams

Bilabial Fricatives

Bilabial fricatives exist allophonically in some languages

(e.g., Spanish)
They were not recognized as a potentially contrastive
sound until relatively recently (70s or 80s)
it was discovered that they contrasted with labiodental fricatives in Ewe, a language spoken in Ghana.

Ewe