CS 551651:

1
CS 551/651 Structure of Spoken Language Lecture
4 Characteristics of Manner of
Articulation John-Paul Hosom Fall 2008
2

• Self-Study
• If you want to look at spectrograms of your own
  voice, there
• are several programs available
• Matlab Use the specgram command color map can
  be changed using colormap gray or similar
  commands
• CSLU Toolkit Download from http//www.cslu.ogi
  .edu/toolkit Registration required but free for
  educational use Plot spectrograms with
  SpeechView tool.
• Praat Download from http//www.fon.hum.uva.nl/p
  raat/ Free and available for windows, lunix,
  Macintosh, etc.

3
Two Vowels preempt
4
Two Vowels heavy oak
5
Two Vowels reapply
6
Acoustic-Phonetic Features Manner of
Articulation Approximately 8 manners of
articulation Name Sub-Types
Examples .
Vowel vowel, diphthong aa, iy, uw, eh, ow,
Approximant liquid, glide l, r, w,
y Nasal m, n, ng Plosive unvoiced,
voiced p, t, k, b, d, g Fricative unvoiced,
voiced f, th, s, sh, v, dh, z,
zh Affricate unvoiced, voiced ch,
jh Aspiration h Flap dx,
nx Change in manner of articulation usually
abrupt and visible manner provides much
information about location of phonemes.
7

• Acoustic-Phonetic Features Manner of
  Articulation
• Approximants (/l/, /r/, /w/, /y/)
• vowel-like properties, but more constriction
• /l/ has tongue-tip touching alveolar ridge,/r/
  has tongue tip curled up/back (retroflex), raised
  and bunched dorsum, sides of tongue touching
  molars,/w/ has tongue back and lips rounded,/y/
  has tongue toward front and very high
• glides (/w/, /y/) can be viewed as extreme
  productionof a vowel (sometimes called
  semivowels) /w/ ? /uw/ /y/ ? /iy/

8

• Acoustic-Phonetic Features Manner of
  Articulation
• Approximants (/l/, /r/, /w/, /y/)
• movement of tongue slower than other
  vowel-to-vowelor consonant-to-vowel transitions,
  but not as slow asdiphthong movement
• sometimes voiceless when following a voiceless
  plosive (play)
• /l/ may have slight discontinuity when tongue
  makes/breakscontact with alveolar ridge other
  approximants have nodiscontinuity

9

• Acoustic-Phonetic Features Manner of
  Articulation
• Nasal (/m/, /n/, /ng/)
• produced with velic port open and obstruction in
  vocal tract
• sound travels through nasal cavities
• these cavities filter speech with both poles
  (resonances)and zeros (anti-resonances)
• longer pathway causes primary resonance to be low
  (220-300 Hz)
• anti-resonances cause higher frequencies to have
  lower power

F1
P1
F3
F2
P2
F4
/m/
F5
F6
Z1
Z2
10

• Acoustic-Phonetic Features Manner of
  Articulation
• Nasal (/m/, /n/, /ng/)
• formant structure obscured by pole-zero pairs
• all three English nasals look and sound similar
  (place of articulation has little effect on
  spectrum)can be distinguished primarily by
  coarticulatory effects on adjacent vowel(s).
• sometimes very brief duration (camp, winner)
• occasional confusion with /w/, /l/ (if F3 not
  visible), andclosure portion of voiced plosives
• often sharp discontinuity with adjacent vowel
• adjacent vowel may be nasalized

11

• Acoustic-Phonetic Features Manner of
  Articulation
• Plosive (Oral Stop) (/p/, /t/, /k/, /b/, /d/,
  /g/)
• closure along vocal tract (lips, alveolar ridge,
  velum)
• buildup of air pressure behind closure
• release of closure
• burst of air
• possible aspiration following burst
• complex process, several changes over brief time
  span
• some context-dependent attributes, some
  semi-invariant ones
• voiced bursts sometimes have voice bar in
  low-frequency region, caused by vocal fold
  vibration withcomplete oral and velic closure.
• sometimes voice bar is excellent cue sometimes
  can be confused with a nasal

12
Acoustic-Phonetic Features Manner of
Articulation
/p ah p/ /t ah
t/ /k ah k/
13

• Acoustic-Phonetic Features Manner of
  Articulation
• Plosive (Oral Stop) (/p/, /t/, /k/, /b/, /d/,
  /g/)
• closure and time required to build pressure
  results insilence region of spectrum prior to
  burst
• burst airflow is a step function, which becomes
  similarto an impulse, which has equal energy at
  all frequencies
• identity of a plosive contained in (at least)
  three areas (1) voice-onset-time (VOT) /
  duration of aspiration (2) formant transitions
  in neighboring vowels/approximants (3) spectral
  shape of burst
• voiced plosives may not show any real voicing
  (!)

14

• Acoustic-Phonetic Features Manner of
  Articulation
• Fricative (/f/, /th/, /s/, /sh/, /v/, /dh/, /z/,
  /zh/)
• fricatives produced by forcing air through a
  constrictionin the mouth
• constriction located anywhere from the
  labiodental region (/f/, /v/) to palato-alveolar
  region (/sh/, /zh/)
• all English fricatives come in voiced and
  unvoiced varieties
• voicing may not be present in voiced fricatives
  (!), makingduration an important distinguishing
  cue (voiced ? shorter)
• the location and type of the constriction create
  spectralanti-resonances as well as resonances
• the main difference between /s/ and /f/ is in
  frequenciesabove 4000 Hz telephone-band speech
  has limit of 4KHz.

15
Acoustic-Phonetic Features Manner of
Articulation Fricative (/f/, /th/, /s/, /sh/,
/v/, /dh/, /z/, /zh/) Rules for distinguishing
between /dh/ and /v/ /dh/ - formant structure
is clearly visible OR frication is stronger at
5000 Hz and not so strong at low
frequencies /v/ - formants not visible at
location of maximum frication OR low-frequency
energy is as strong as the energy
at 5000 Hz However, due to the difficulty of
distinguishing /dh/ from /v/ and distinguishing
/th/ from /f/, in the spectrogram reading
exercises we will treat them as the same.
16

• Acoustic-Phonetic Features Manner of
  Articulation
• Affricate (/ch/, /jh/)
• Affricates are conceptually like diphthongs two
  separatephonemes considered as one
• English has two affricates /ch/ ? /t
  sh/ /jh/ ? /d zh/
• Sometimes cue to affricate is in burst preceding
  fricativein closure between vowel and
  fricative.
• Sometimes cue to affricate is in voicing or
  duration.

17

• Acoustic-Phonetic Features Manner of
  Articulation
• Aspiration (/h/)
• like vowels, except usually no voicing
• can usually see formant structure
• formant patterns similar to surrounding vowel(s)

/ah h aw
s/ a house
18

• Acoustic-Phonetic Features Manner of
  Articulation
• Flaps (/dx/, /nx/)
• allophone of /t/, /d/, or /n/
• very brief duration no closure for /dx/
• indicated by dip in energy and F2 near 1800 Hz

write another
19

• Spectrogram Reading Fricatives
• usually can divide fricatives into strong and
  weakstrong /s/, /sh/, /z/, /zh/weak /f/,
  /v/, /th/, /dh/
• voicing may be present only in transition into a
  voicedfricative sometimes not at all
• voiced fricatives tend to be shorter than
  unvoiced, relative to the duration of the
  neighboring vowel
• place of articulation causes some change in
  spectral shape/sh/ and /zh/ have greater energy
  at lower frequency than /s/, /z/

20

• Spectrogram Reading Fricatives
• /th/ sometimes has adjacent vowels F3, F4, F5
  extend into /th/,in contrast with /f/
• /th/ and /f/ often have weak energy during middle
  part offricative
• sometimes /f/ and /th/ best distinguished by
  formant transitionsof neighboring vowel(s) more
  labial vs. more alveolarcharacteristics of
  transitions.
• sometimes /f/ has strong low-frequency energy
  (breath noise in a close-talking microphone)
• sometimes /th/ has more high-frequency energy
  above 4 kHz

21
Spectrogram Reading Fricatives
/f iy th iy
s iy sh iy/
22
Spectrogram Reading Fricatives
/v iy dh iy z
iy zh iy/
23
Spectrogram Reading Fricatives
/f ah th ah
s ah sh ah/
24
Spectrogram Reading Fricatives
/v ah dh ah
z ah zh ah/
25
Spectrogram Reading Fricatives
/f aa th aa
s aa sh aa/
26
Spectrogram Reading Fricatives
/v aa dh aa z
aa zh aa/
27
Spectrogram Reading Fricatives
/iy f iy th
iy s iy sh/
28
Spectrogram Reading Fricatives
/iy v iy dh
iy z iy zh/
29
Spectrogram Reading Fricatives
/ah f ah th
ah s ah sh/
30
Spectrogram Reading Fricatives
/ah v ah dh ah
z ah zh/
31
Spectrogram Reading Fricatives
/aa f aa th aa
s aa sh/
32
Spectrogram Reading Fricatives
/aa v aa dh aa
z aa zh/