Acoustics of Vowels and Consonants SUMMARY

We examined spectrographic characteristics of speech. Although precise acoustic makeup of each sound will differ for each individual speaker, there are core features that will enable us to identify general patterns. In the investigation of vowels and diphthongs, the formant patterns are the cues for recognition. In stops, fricatives, and affricates, which form the group of obstruents, the different degrees of obstruction reveal clear acoustic patterns: a gap for stops, frication noise for fricatives, and a stop gap followed by a frication noise for affricates. Sonorant consonants behave rather like vowels in that they exhibit a voice bar along with formant-like structures. We also saw that the context in which a particular sound occurs (e.g. adjacent sounds, word positions, suprasegmentals, speech style and rate, etc.) influences the acoustic characteristics. Finally, we briefly looked at some practical applications of spectrographic analysis in remedial contexts.