Acoustic Phonetics: Speech Signals, Spectra, and Analysis

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What is acoustic phonetics?

It is the subfield of phonetics that investigates the acoustic properties of speech sounds, including waveform and spectral characteristics, and how these relate to production, perception, and linguistic units.

What is the difference between time-domain and frequency-domain analysis?

Time-domain analysis examines how a signal changes over time, including duration and amplitude. Frequency-domain analysis examines the frequency components of the signal, often summarized in a spectrum.

What did the spectrograph contribute to speech research?

It enabled systematic visual analysis of speech spectra, supporting investigation of periodic and aperiodic sounds, vocal-tract resonances, vowel formants, voice quality, and prosody.

What do ILPR and the plosion index help characterize?

ILPR closely approximates the voice-source signal and helps estimate glottal closure instants. The plosion index is a scalar time-domain feature for characterizing the closure-to-burst transition of stop consonants.

What is fundamental frequency in speech?

It is the repetition rate of a periodic sound’s vocal-fold vibration and is associated with perceived pitch.

Quiz questions

1. Which set contains examples of time-domain properties studied in acoustic phonetics?Answer: Duration, amplitude, and fundamental frequency
2. What does a spectrogram primarily represent?Answer: How frequency energy in a speech signal changes over time
3. How did researchers use the Edison phonograph to build up a picture of a speech signal’s spectrum?Answer: They replayed recordings through different band-pass filters and compared the results.
4. Which statement best describes the contribution of ILPR?Answer: It approximates the voice-source signal and helps estimate glottal closure instants.
5. Why is acoustic phonetics connected to articulatory and auditory phonetics?Answer: Acoustic properties can be related to how speech is produced and perceived.