Exam Question Checklist

Exam 1997 Question 8

"Sketch stylised spectrograms of ‘bard' and ‘park' and list the acoustic cues that distinguish the initial and final consonants. Discuss how Voice Onset Time (VOT) varies between a) voiced and voiceless plosives b) bilabial, alveolar and velar plosives c) English and French plosives."

20 things you should mention:

• Sketch
  • freq axis OK
  • time axis OK
  • distinguish V+ from V-
  • bilabial burst
  • aspiration
  • F1 cut back
  • F1/F2 transitions for bilabials
  • vowel formants
  • alveolar/velar formant transitions OK
  • vowel duration longer before /d/
• Initial
  • strength of burst
  • aspiration
  • VOT
  • F1 cut back
• Final
  • F2+F3 transitions
  • burst frequency
  • length of vowel
• VOT
  • Voiced short, voiceless long
  • bilabial shorter, velar longer
  • English aspirated, French unaspirated