Further readings on this section

Phonetics and Phonology (ENG)



VU

Lesson-23
ACOUSTIC PHONETICS-I


At the end of this section, the students will be able to
• EXPLAIN and DEFINE acoustic phonetics, source/filter theory and tube models.

Topic-114: Acoustic Phonetics

As an important part of phonetics, acoustics is the study of the physics of the speech signal (i.e., when speech sound travels through the air in a waveform) from the speaker’s mouth to the hearer’s ear through vibrations. In acoustics, it is possible to measure and analyze these vibrations (physical properties) by mathematical techniques usually by using specially-developed computer software to produce spectrograms of speech. Acoustic phonetics also studies the relationship between activity in the speaker’s vocal tract and the resulting sounds by involving physics, computer, statistics and a number of experiments in lab. Thus, the analysis of speech using the expertise available in acoustic phonetics is claimed to be more objective and scientific than the traditional auditory method which mostly depends on the reliability of the trained human ear. It also involves advanced level speech software for analyzing sound differences (in terms of pitch, loudness and quality) and distinguishes largely among speech sounds by giving the detailed composition of energy (e.g., frequency on spectrum.

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