Questions tagged [acoustic-analysis]
Models and methodology for analysing raw speech signals. Whereas articulation serves as the qualitative foundation of phonetics, acoustic analysis serves as the quantitative foundation.
57
questions
45
votes
6
answers
6k
views
How do linguists place the vowels of a language precisely on the vowel trapezoid?
Since vowels in human speech are a continuous spectrum rather than a discrete set, many descriptions of languages I’ve seen — not only on Wikipedia — place the vowels of a language as dots in a two-...
- 831
12
votes
1
answer
350
views
Are there any alternatives to Source-Filter theory?
The linear source-filter theory of speech production ( Fant, G. (1970) Acoustic Theory of Speech Production; Stevens and House (1961)) is very useful for understanding speech synthesis and a ...
- 298
9
votes
2
answers
791
views
Cross-linguistic association between velarization and pharyngealization
Articulatorily, velarization and pharyngealization are distinct, but they are often conflated in linguistic analyses I've seen:
Conflating them is common enough, I presume, that the IPA allocates the ...
- 3,234
6
votes
1
answer
398
views
What are the features that distinguish a velar /k/ from an uvular /q/ in a spectrogram?
I am trying to annotate a recording of a language that has both velar k and uvular q. It’s tricky because I can’t always distinguish the two phonemes by ear.
What features may I see in a spectrogram ...
- 2,701
5
votes
3
answers
3k
views
Formant frequencies of consonants
In the old days, phones were defined by the requisite articulation, both consonants and vowels. As time wore on and science and technology advanced, vowels became better defined by their acoustic ...
- 269
5
votes
1
answer
266
views
Why were the formants of high and back vowels difficult to obtain? And why not anymore?
I was reading the second chapter of Three Areas of Experimental Phonetics by Peter Ladefoged (1967), in which he summarizes the studies he conducted in the 1950s and 1960s which demonstrated practical ...
- 4,880
5
votes
1
answer
217
views
Are click sounds accompanied by specific formant transitions?
Is it possible to identify click sounds like [‖ ʘ !] by formant transitions in the surrounding vowels? I know stops and fricatives have that feature.
I'm just wondering how the five (main) click ...
- 346
4
votes
4
answers
2k
views
Software request: Spectrograms that represent intensity with a colour gradient
There is a range of computer programs that can represent acoustic energy graphically in a spectrogram. I usually use Praat, which uses a black and white gradient to represent the intensity of energy ...
- 4,269
4
votes
1
answer
348
views
What's the acoustic difference between laterals and nasals
I have a hard time distinguishing nasals and laterals on the spectrogram. They both seem to exhibit lower amplitude, and I think on average nasals have lower F1. Are there any sources on the acoustic ...
- 43
4
votes
2
answers
55
views
Voice Onset Time, Onsets, Codas, and Pre- & Post-Aspiration
Whilst we're all familiar with voicing on an intuitive and/or phonological level, the actual acoustic phonetics are somewhat less intuitive to many of us.
The main way of formalising this intuitive ...
- 6,486
4
votes
1
answer
2k
views
How to read a spectrogram?
I read some materials online How to Read a Spectrogram, Reading Spectrograms: Consonants, Reading Spectrograms: Vowels. I still have no idea how to analyze a spectrogram. Could anyone explain with the ...
- 171
4
votes
1
answer
432
views
How to measure auditory distances between vowels
(Followup to this question, also related to this answer.)
The Handbook of the International Phonetic Association (1999: 11–2) defines the values of cardinal vowels as follows:
[T]wo fully front ...
- 4,880
3
votes
2
answers
258
views
What are the advantages of using ToBI for prosodic analysis?
I am a grad student who wants to compare the prosody of two of my classmates from different regions who speak different dialects of English.
The obvious tool to use is ToBI, of course because it ...
- 2,701
3
votes
2
answers
2k
views
Sentence stress detection
I was looking for APIs for the detection of sentence stress, also known as prosodic stress, based on input audio.
(Ideally, I was hoping for a library able to assess the level of prominence of a ...
- 563
3
votes
1
answer
407
views
Is it possible to recognize place of articulation of consonants through spectrograms?
I am trying to undestand how PRAAT works and to recognize consonants through spectrograms. I Know that it's possible to distinguish fricative consonants from nasal ones (for example) but is it ...
- 31
3
votes
1
answer
266
views
How harmonic is speech?
I have read that voiced sounds are harmonic, e.g. the frequency spectrum consists of integer multiples of F0. If these are precise integer multiples, the human voice would be considered a perfect ...
- 31
3
votes
1
answer
72
views
Unmoving F1 / formant below F1?
I'm trying to understand some basics, hope this is an ok question.
Here's a recording of me producing /i/, /ɛ/, /a/: https://namakajiri.net/misc/i%c9%9ba.webm
nevermind the transition between the ...
- 4,950
3
votes
1
answer
634
views
Rare diphthongs
One would think that as long as one of the two vowels are closed, then a diphthong could be formed.
However, if a diphthong consists of two closed vowels with the same roundness, like the following 8 ...
- 661
3
votes
0
answers
2k
views
How can I distinguish different consonants in Praat/acoustic analysis?
How can I distinguish different consonants based on acoustic information/spectrographic analysis such as in Praat? Is there a list of acoustic cues for different consonants like there is for average ...
- 31
2
votes
2
answers
165
views
Evidence of connections between f0 and a physiological parameter?
I have the impression that physiological parameters like e.g. the size of neck will alter their f0. It's just an impression but it seems to hold - I can usually guess someone's neck size over the ...
- 2,701
2
votes
2
answers
95
views
Voicing Into Closure? [segmentation, waveform and spectrogram form Praat]
I'm wondering for how long the voicing persists into closure here, if at all. At about 50% into the closure I would say it's noise only from there on, nevermind F1. But what about the oscillations ...
- 41
2
votes
1
answer
527
views
Seeking linguistic terms for how pronunciation reflects word boundaries
I'm looking for some correct terminology to use within the fields of phonology and acoustics (I assume).
In spoken language there is generally some kind of very brief pauses, changes of intonation, ...
- 14.6k
2
votes
3
answers
379
views
Why do retroflex and postalveolar fricatives sound so similar despite the quite different positions of the tongue?
If they sound so similar, does it mean that they have a larger chance to be free variants of a phoneme and even become the other in a sound change. Do they play different or similar role in sound ...
- 1,057
2
votes
2
answers
282
views
Spectrograms from bandpass filters
According to Wikipedia, bandpass filters were used before the digital era began. Can anyone explain to me how they appeared or were analyzed?
Spectrograms are usually created in one of two ways: ...
- 2,701
2
votes
1
answer
62
views
The reason for a partly voiced hold in I’d
In I’d take ’d t can be pronounced as [t] with the first part of the hold voiced (the second one and the plosion with aspiration are voiceless).
How is it better explained: is it because of [ai] (...
- 510
2
votes
1
answer
718
views
Praat's y-axis in spectrum graph
We have a tone in notched noise in Praat. We want the noise to be 23 dB less than the tone, so we created a noise coefficient using SNR, applied this to the noise file, and combined it with the tone ...
- 93
2
votes
1
answer
62
views
Should I include this piece in the vowel? [spectrogram]
I'm trying to measure vowel length in 'beat", utterance-final. Should I place the marker where it is now or further to the right, as there is some activity there?
- 41
2
votes
1
answer
148
views
Acoustic difference in breathing in and breathing out
Many people can distinguish whether a person is inhaling or exhaling only by audio, even when the tongue and the lip position (=formants) is the same. That must mean there is a difference in the ...
- 526
2
votes
1
answer
126
views
In what way did the invention of the telephone shape the development of phonetic theory?
According to my rudimentary understanding of electronics, the telephone transforms sounds to an electric medium transmitted to a receiver over wires. You don't really need phonetics to make that work, ...
- 2,701
2
votes
2
answers
661
views
Acoustic description of Polish vowels
Using formants, it is possible to produce an acoustic description of vowel quality. Basically, the first formant (F1) corresponds to vowel height, and the second formant (F2) to vowel backness, as ...
- 4,269
2
votes
0
answers
67
views
How does Praat map quantized values to frequency statistics?
I'm working with 16-bit WAV files. As far as I understand, amplitude is measured at a sampling rate of 44100 samples/second (i.e. Hertz), with each sample being represented as binary data through ...
- 21
2
votes
0
answers
160
views
Is it appropriate to say that [ɕ] is an intermediate form of [ʃ ç]?
The description is found in a paper about the German fricatives
https://www.degruyter.com/view/j/labphon.2014.5.issue-1/lp-2014-0005/lp-2014-0005.xml
How do the three sound differ from each other in ...
- 1,057
2
votes
0
answers
155
views
What phonetic features are commonly used in forensic speaker identification and verification?
Speaker verification is the task of estimating how likely it is that two speech recordings come from the same speaker, while speaker identification tries to match a speech recording with one of a ...
- 4,269
1
vote
1
answer
2k
views
What's the relationship between harmonics and formants?
I'm new in speech-processing and there are some notions confused me.
Through Fourier Transform, we can get spectra of specific sound signals, the harmonic frequencies can be shown as the peaks in the ...
- 291
1
vote
2
answers
232
views
Why does /zd-/ require more effort even though both the consonants have the same voicing?
In most language, the rule for combining consonants is that they should have the same voice. For example: in English, a word can never start with /zt-/ but can start with /st-/. It's not that /zt-/ ...
user30668
1
vote
2
answers
432
views
Amplitude as the y-axis on a waveform
I just noticed, perhaps naively, that the representation of amplitude on the y-axis of a waveform is somewhat paradoxical. Although the space between each value on the y-axis is identical, the units ...
- 2,701
1
vote
2
answers
95
views
Acoustic signal to phones?
I am currently trying to understand speech perception, and are at the moment a bit stuck.. I seem to understand how the ear process incoming sound, but i don't understand the concept of phones. Why ...
- 169
1
vote
3
answers
1k
views
What are "Slices" of a spectrogram?
Reading over my class notes, I see that you can consider a spectrogram is being comprised of many "slices" (static spectra? Whatever that means) horizontally, making it so "time appears continuous".
...
- 2,701
1
vote
2
answers
100
views
How do people discern different plosives without formant transition?
People can discern wether a plosive is /p t k/ by formant transition of a vowel. While how do people discern them, if it is a consonant cluster of few plosives without any voicing, as [pt] or even ...
- 1,057
1
vote
2
answers
3k
views
How do I draw just one channel of a waveform in Praat?
I have a nice 2-channel recording in Praat. I want to illustrate the waveform for an article, but when I select file>draw visible sound, the result is both channels. Is there any way to adjust this so ...
- 2,701
1
vote
1
answer
138
views
Measuring phonetic correlates of stress (intensity in particular)
It's normal enough for people to say that we can attribute the percept of 'stress accent' to certain acoustic correlates – usually higher relative fundamental frequency, intensity, and duration of ...
1
vote
1
answer
66
views
Why can increasing the speed of closing the vocal folds increases the loudness?
In Henning Reetz and Allard Jongman's Phonetics, they mentioned a way to increase the loudness is to increase the speed of closing the vocal folds. The points are summarized below:
The the most ...
- 99
1
vote
1
answer
76
views
Acoustic parameters for phonation
does anyone know what the acoustic parameter of phonation is in a sound wave? I mean, how can we recognize if a sound is voiced or voiceless (and devoiced, of course) based on its wave?
I've been ...
1
vote
1
answer
107
views
How was phonetics performed with a phonograph?
How was phonetics performed with a phonograph? From the Wikipedia excerpt below, I guess it went something like this:
A segment was recorded on a phonograph.
That segment was Filtered each time with ...
- 2,701
1
vote
1
answer
472
views
How are "spectral properties" distinct from "linguistic properties"?
As a linguist, I have a good idea of what linguistic properties of a sound can be: be they describable in terms of distinctive features or whatever. But what, then, are spectral properties? It's not ...
- 2,701
1
vote
0
answers
40
views
How to compare the F2 values of the vowels statistically?
How can we compare the F2 values of the vowels produced by ten speakers? There are only two vowels to be investigated. Therefore, 20 vowels are produced in total. I believe paired t-test is the way to ...
1
vote
1
answer
63
views
Speech signal analysis: What can be seen in the signal?
I know that the only speech phenomena one can see in a speech signal are those that arise from articulator movement and which have features that aid perception (like energy as particular freqs+times ...
- 2,701
1
vote
0
answers
164
views
Praat: CPP from modified .Manipulation file
I am working with dysphonic speech and Praat's automated pulse detection algorithm is inadequate, so I manually correct the placement of pulses using .Manipulation files.
My ultimate goal is to ...
- 11
1
vote
2
answers
172
views
How was the acoustic theory of speech production informed by electrical circuit theory?
The acoustic theory of speech production as worked out by Gunnar Fant depends on a correspondence between the vocal tract and elementary electrical circuits. But the quote below perplexes me. In what ...
- 2,701
0
votes
2
answers
298
views
Distinguishing between [s] and [ʪ] in spectrogram
Is there is a way to differentiate between [s] and [ʪ] using spectral analysis (Pratt or spectrum view or any other software)? Is there is any particular pattern that only appears with the [ʪ]?
[ʪ] ...
- 137