Topic-032: The Waveforms of Consonants As part of the acoustics of consonants, we need to note down a few distinctive points about their waveforms. Although the places of articulation are not obvious in any waveform yet the differences in some of the principal manners of articulation—stop, nasal, fricative, and approximant—are usually apparent. Furthermore, as already pointed out, we can also seethe differences between voiced and voiceless sounds. The difference between a vowel and a consonant in the waveform is very easy to understand. For the vowel sounds, the lips open and the amplitude gets larger. We can also observe the time duration of a sound from its waveform (vowels are longer than consonants. In case of a stop sound, the closure and the burst are also easy to judge. Similarly, we can also note down the voicing bar fora voiced sound producing small voicing vibrations instead of a flat line. A fricative with a more nearly random waveform pattern can also be judged from its waveform. Go to page 18 (Figure 1.11) of your textbook (Ladefoged and Johnson, 2012) for the analysis of the waveform of a phrase my two boys know how to fish. Think about various hints from the waveforms related to their respective sounds.
