Exam Question Checklist

Exam 1999 Question 2

"Describe in detail the auditory and perceptual stages involved in determining the phonological identity of a vowel sound."

20 things you should mention:

• Auditory
  • outer ear: pinna, ear canal, ear drum
  • - frequency response of meatus: peak at mid frequencies
  • middle lear: ossicular chain, force applied to oval window
  • - impedance matching
  • innear ear: fluid flow, vibration of basilar membrane
  • - BM resonant properties vary with position, place coding
  • - hair cells sitting on BM get bent by vibrations, fire
  • - nerve cells fire proportionally to amount of vibration
  • - filtering effect for complex sounds
  • - harmonics and spectral cross-section on auditory nerve
• Perceptual
  • peaks in pattern important - formants
  • - relate to articulated vowel quality
  • normalisation
  • - speaker vocal tract size
  • - typical use of formant space
  • - phonetic context
  • - vowe quality/vowel quadrilateral
  • account for accent
  • different qualities for same phonological vowel
  • identify closest matching phonological vowel from language inventory