LAB 3: Broadband Spectral Analysis of Sonorant Consonants

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 make acoustical analyses of sonorant English consonants in vowel-consonant-vowel phrases.

Here are the resources you will need:

Lab 3 Handout (PDF)

Utterances

You will need your database of recorded utterances from Lab 1. In this lab, you will use the following utterances from that database:

• Nasals: m n ng
• Liquids: r l
• Glides: w y

If you have not recorded an utterance database in Lab 1, you can download example recordings of the utterances needed for this lab.

The Tools

• record - the recording software (VAX)
• lspecto - used to make and print spectrograms (Vax or UNIX®/Linux®)
• xkl - used for spectrum and waveform analysis (UNIX®/Linux®)

Reference Readings

Stevens, K. N. Acoustic Phonetics. Cambridge, MA: MIT Press, 1999, chapter 9. ISBN: 026219404X.

Espy-Wilson, C. "Acoustic measures for linguistic features distinguishing the semivowels /wjrl/ in American English." J Acoust Soc Am 92 (1992): 736-757.