wk5_Vowel_Acoustics

Vowels in American English (A.E)

Vowels in Korean: traditional descriptions

Acoustics of Vowels

• formants: some frequencies amplified in the production of the sonorant sounds (e.g., vowels)
• 
  • Sound window > Formant > show formant
  • Formant > formant listing: F1, F2, F3
  • Formant > formant setting > Maximum formant (Hz): (approximately) Female spk 5,500 Hz; male spk 5,000 Hz

Acoustic cues to vowels:

• Height: characterized by F1, inverse relationship
• High Vs (low F1) vs. Low (high F1) Vs
• Backness: characterized by F2
• Front Vs (high F2) vs. back Vs (low F2)
• Role of F3
• Not so important in American English vowels except /ɚ/ (low F3)
• Sensitive to lip rounding

Spectrograms of English vowels

• (high) Front vowels: low F1, high F2
• (high) Back vowels: low F1, low F2
• 
• (low) Back vowels: high F1, low F2
• 
• Vowels can be tricky when F1 and F2 are essentially sitting on top of one another. If the formant looks “too fat”, it’s probably two formants.
• Expect about 4 (up to 5) formants for the 5,000 Hz view range.
• F0 might be shown at the bottom for low vowels.

Formant schematic

• (High) front Vs: large differences between F1 and F2
• (Central) low Vs: F1/F2 at around 1,000 Hz
• (high) Back Vs: low F1 and F2 (both lower than 1,000 Hz)

Diphthongs

• buy [aı]
• boy [ɔı]
• bout [aʊ]

Rhotic vowels

• Acoustic characteristics of rhotic sounds: low F3