LAB 4: Spectral Analysis of Stop and Fricative 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 stop and fricative consonants.

Here are the resources that you will need:

Lab 4 Handout (PDF)

Utterances

You will need your database of recorded utterances from Lab 1. In this lab, you will use the following consonants from at least one of the following sets in your database:

• Voiced and voiceless stop consonants and /h/
• Voiced and voiceless fricative consonants
• Stops and affricates produced with the tongue blade

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

Liberman, A. M. Speech: A Special Code. Cambridge, MA: MIT Press, 1996, chapters 4, 5, and 8. ISBN: 0262121921.

Stevens, K. N. "Models for the production and acoustics of stop consonants." Speech Communication 13 (1993): 367-375.

———. Acoustic Phonetics. Cambridge, MA: MIT Press, 1999, Chapters 7 and 8. ISBN: 026219404X.

See Also the Following Notes and Reprints (in the Speech Group Library)

Manuel, S. Y., and K. N. Stevens. "Formant transitions: Teasing apart consonant and vowel contributions." Proc International Conference of Phonetic Sciences. Vol. 4. Stockholm, Sweden, 1995, pp. 436-439.

Stevens, K. N., S. E. Blumstein, L. Glicksman, M. Burton, and K. Kurowski. "Acoustic and perceptual characteristics of voicing in fricatives and fricative clusters." J Acoust Soc Am 91 (1992): 2979-3000.

Stevens, K. N. "Diverse acoustic cues at consonantal landmarks." Phonetica 57 (2000): 139-151.