LAB 8: Formant Frequency Calculations from Area Function Data

Labs: 1 | 2 | 3 | 4 | 5 | 6 | 7 | 8 | 9 | 10 | 11 | 12 | 13 | 14 | 15 | 16 | 17

The main purpose of this laboratory is to investigate the quantal theory of speech articulation.

Here are the resources you will need:

Lab 8 Handout (PDF)

Utterances

You will analyze the set of words "beat" and "buy" from the database of recorded utterances from Lab1.

If you have not recorded an utterance database in Lab 1, you can download example recordings of the utterances needed for this lab.

The Tools

  • MATLAB® (UNIX®)
  • vtcalcs - MATLAB® scripts

The tool vtcalcs is available in the vtcalcs_2002 subdirectory of the labc account. If you do not have access to the labc account, you can download the scripts from the Lab Software page.

Reference Readings

Stevens, K. N. "The quantal nature of speech: Evidence from Articulatory-Acoustic data." In Human Communication: A Unified View. Edited by E. E. David and P. B. Denes. New York, NY: McGraw-Hill, 1972, pp. 51-66.

———. "On the quantal nature of speech." J of Phonetics 17 (1989): 3-45.

Buy at MIT Press ———. Acoustic Phonetics. Cambridge, MA: MIT Press, 1999, pp. 136-152. ISBN: 026219404X.