LAB 11: Prosody 1: Vowel and Consonant Durations in Speech

Labs: 1 | 2 | 3 | 4 | 5 | 6 | 7 | 8 | 9 | 10 | 11 | 12 | 13 | 14 | 15 | 16 | 17

The main purpose of this laboratory is to analyze acoustic evidence for phrase boundaries. You will use utterances spoken in one of two prosodic forms: AB utterances and BC utterances. (See the handout for details.)

Here are the resources that you will need:

Lab Handout (PDF)

Utterances

You will use a set of pre-recorded utterances that are stored in the labc account in the directories prosodylab1 and prosodylab2. These utterances are:

• AB and BC utterances (2 each for four speakers)
• readings by different professional radio news broadcasters that have been labeled for their prosodic structure

If you do not have access to the labc account, you can download the utterances for this lab.

The Tools

You can use either one of the following two analysis tools:

• xwaves - used for spectrum and waveform analysis (UNIX®/Linux®). If you use this tool, you also have the option of using the transcriber script. This script configures xwaves for the types of tasks done in this lab.
• xkl - used for spectrum and waveform analysis (UNIX®/Linux®)

Reference Readings

Klatt, D. H. "Linguistic uses of segmental duration in English: Acoustic and perceptual evidence." J Acoust Soc Amer 59 (1976): 1208-1221.