Linguistic Phonetics

Assignments

Assignment 1

Basic Acoustics (PDF)

Assignments 2 and 3, Mandarin VOT Assigment

Mandarin VOT Assignment, part 1 (PDF)
Mandarin Supplement (AIFF - 5.6MB)

For part two of the assignment, write up a discussion of aspiration in Mandarin affricates, answering the questions under 2 in the previous Mandarin VOT assignment.

Assignment 4, Lip Rounding

Modeling the acoustic effects of lip rounding (PDF)

Liprounding Supplement (WAV)

Assignment 3, Acoustics

1. We are planning to digitize a recording and we need to be able to measure the first two formants of vowels produced by the speaker, who has a vocal tract of about 15 cm in length. What is the minimum sampling rate that we could use, given the expected maximum F2 for this speaker? Assume a maximum constriction length of 4 cm in calculating the expected maximum F2 for the speaker.
2. Sound waves reach the eardrum through the ear canal (or external auditory meatus). Given the ear canal is a tube of about 2.5cm long, open at one end, what effect will it have on sound waves? (Be as precise as possible - i.e. use a simple calculation to estimate the effect).
3. What is the interval between spectral points (analysis components) in an FFT spectrum if the sampling rate is 11 kHz and the analysis window is 512 samples long?

Assignment 4, Acoustics

Acoustics assignment 4 (PDF)

Assignment 5, Affricate Voicing Experiment

Affricate Voicing Experiment (PDF)

Assignment 6, Writeup

Write up on affricate voicing experiment (PDF - 1.1MB)

Supplement Data - Excel spreadsheet Statistical analyses (XLSX)

Final Project

The final project usually involves a small experiment or other phonetic study, on some topic relevant to the course. Students identify topics through discussion and submit a report on their study.

Some examples of final project titles include:

• ‘The Affrication of Stops in Scottish and American English’
• ‘Vowel Duration Before Ejective Stops in Georgian’
• ‘Vowel length does not cue stress in a language with phonemic vowel length: A study of Mi’gmaq’
• ‘Using Formant Synthesis to Investigate Vowel Perception’
• ‘Comparing glides ‘wa’ ‘wi’ and ‘ju’ in Korean and English’
• ‘Individual Phonetic Variation: Affricate Velarization’
• ‘Vowel Reduction in the Thai Language’
• ‘Palatalization in Russian’
• ‘Utterance Final Pitch Patterns in Echo and Particle Questions in Chinese’