ENG507 Final Term Preparation 2020 by Paragon

ENG507 spring 2020

What is retroflex and how it pronounced(5) NOT SURE ABOUT PRONOUNCING (topic 25)

Retroflex: This sound is produced when the tongue tip curls against the back of the alveolar ridge. Many speakers of English do not use retroflex sounds at all but it is a common sound in Pakistani languages. They are pronounced by general lowering of the third and fourth formants such as Urdu, Sindhi, Pashto, Balochi and Punjabi.

Q. Trills and Flap. (3) (Topic#31)

In the production of trill the articulator is set in motion by the current of air (r). t is a typical so and of Scottish English as in words like "rye' and 'row Flap is front and back movement of tongue tip at the underside of tongue with curling behind. It is found in abundance in Indo-Aryan (IA) languages (t). Typical flap sounds found in IA languages is an retroflex sound and the examples are It). 14) and In).

Q. What is acoustic correlate of vowel height? (2) (Topic#34)

Acoustically, vowels are mainly distinguished by the first two formant frequencies FI and F2; FI is inversely related to the vowel height (which means that smaller F1 amplitude = higher vowels), and F2 is related to the front or back of the vowels (smaller F2 amplitude= more back vowels).

Q. Explain Intonation in simple words. (topic#86)

Intonation refers (very) simply to the variations in the pitch of a speaker's voice (f0) used to convey or alter meaning but in its broader and more popular sense intonation covers much of the same field as "prosody' where variations in such things as voice quality, tempo and loudness are included. Intonation as a suprasegmental feature performs several functions in a language. Its most important function is to act as a signal of grammatical structure (e.g. creating patterns to distinguish among grammatical categories). where it performs a role similar to punctuation (in written language). It may furnish far more contrasts (for conveying meaning). Intonation also gives an idea about the syntactic boundaries (sentence, clause and phrase level boundaries). The role of intonation in the communication. It is quite important as it also conveys personal attitude (e.g., sarcasm, puzzlement, anger, etc.). Finally, it can signal contrasts in pitch along with other prosodic and paralinguistic features. It can also bring variation in meaning and can prove an important signal of the social background of the speakers.

.Q. VOT of /p/ and /ph/ (topic#101)

In a voiceless aspirated plosive (such as /p/ there is a delay (or lag) before voicing starts; and, in a voiceless aspirated plosive (eg, /p/), the delay is much longer, depending on the amount of aspiration. The amount of this delay is called Voice Onset Time (VOT) which in relation to the types of plosive varies from language to language.

Consonant gestures (topic 104)

In phonetics and phonology, speech sounds (segments) using basic units of contrast are defined as gestures – they are treated as the abstract characterizations of articulatory events with an intrinsic time dimension. Thus sounds (segments) are used to describe the phonological structure of specific languages and account for phonological variation. In this type of description in phonetics and phonology, sounds are the underlying units which are represented by classes of functionally equivalent movement patterns (gestures)

Q. Why the English lateral V is called an approximant? 3/ Difference of lateral sounds of Americans and British English. (Topic#111)

The only English lateral phoneme, at least in British English, is /l/ with allophones [l] as in led [lɛd] and [ɫ] as in bell [bɛɫ]. In most forms of American English, initial [l] has more valorization than is typically heard in British English initial [l]. In all forms of English, the air flows freely without audible friction, making this sound a voiced alveolar lateral approximant. It may be compared with the sound [ɹ] in red [ɹɛd], which is for many people a voiced alveolar central approximant. Laterals are usually presumed to be voiced approximants unless a specific statement to the contrary is made.

Q. What are gestures?(Topic#104)

In phonetics and phonology, speech sounds (segments) using basic units of contrast are defined as gestures.

Q. dental stop 5 Marks (Topic#106)

Dental Sounds are present both in British and American English, e.g. dental fricatives [θ,ð] but there are no dental stops, nasals, or laterals except allophonically realized (before [θ, ð] as in eighth, tenth, wealth). Many speakers of French, Italian, and other languages (such as Urdu, Pashto and Sindhi) typically have dental stops such as [t̪d̪]. However, there is a great deal of individual variation in the pronunciation of these consonants in all these languages.

Q. Nasal Stop (Topic#108)

Like stops, nasal can also occur voiced or voiceless (for example, in Burmese, Ukrainian and French) though in English and other most languages nasals are voiced. As voiceless nasals are comparatively rare, they are symbolized simply by adding the voiceless diacritic [ ] under the symbol for the voiced sound. There are no special symbols for voiceless nasals and it is written as /m/-a combination of the letter for the voiced bilabial nasal and a diacritic indicating voicelessness.

Source Filter Theory of Speech Production (T#118)

Source-filter theory is an important concept in acoustic phonetics. It is a model of speech (e.g.,vowel) production. According to this theory, source refers to the waveform of the vibrating larynx. Its spectrum is rich in harmonics, which gradually decrease in amplitude as their frequency increases. The various resonance chambers of the vocal tract, especially the movements of the tongue and lips, act on the laryngeal source in the manner of a filter, reinforcing certain harmonics relative to others. Thus the combination of these two elements (larynx as source and cavity as filter) is known as the source-filter model of speech (e.g., vowel) production.

Overtone in source filter theory (T#118)

When discussing differences in quality, we noted that the quality of a vowel depends on its overtone structure (i.e., formants). Now putting this idea another way, we can say that a sound (e.g., vowel) contains a number of different pitches simultaneously. There is the pitch at which it is actually spoken, and there are the various overtone pitches that give it its distinctive quality. We distinguish one vowel from another by the differences in these overtones. The overtones are called formants, and the lowest three formants distinguish vowels from each other.

Q. Mechanism of source filter/ Role of vocal folds and vocal tract in Source filter theory. (Topic#119)

In this theory, the tract is represented using a source-filter model and several devices have been devised to synthesize speech in this way. The idea is that the air in the vocal tract acts like the air in an organ pipe, or in a bottle. Sound travels from a noise-making source (i.e., the vocal fold vibration) to the lips. Then, at the lips, most of the sound energy radiates away from the lips for a listener to hear, while some of the sound energy reflects back into the vocal tract. The addition of the reflected sound energy with the source energy tends to amplify energy at some frequencies and damp energy at others, depending on the length and shape of the vocal tract. The vocal folds (at larynx) are then a source of sound energy, and the cavity (vocal tract - due to the interaction of the reflected sound waves in it) is a frequency filter altering the timbre of the vocal fold sound. Thus this same source-filter mechanism is at work in many musical instruments. In the brass instruments, for example, the noise source is the vibrating lips in the mouthpiece of the instrument, and the filter is provided by the long brass tube.

Q. Why air vibrate more than in one way in vocal tract? (Topic#120)

Any particle of air, such as that in the vocal tract or that in a bottle, will vibrate in a way that depends on its size and shape. Remember that the air in the vocal tract is set in vibration by the action of the vocal folds (in larynx). Every time the vocal folds open and close, there (activation). Irrespective of the rate of vibration at source (of the vocal folds), the air in the vocal tract a pulse of acoustic energy will resonate at these frequencies as long as the position of the vocal organs remains the same. Because of the complex shape of the filter (tract), the air will vibrate in more than one way at once.