Accented syllable: A syllable made prominent by pitch (commonly a pitch
peak). In English intonation, a stressed syllable made prominent by being
accompanied by the start of a new trend in the pitch contour of the
utterance.
Active articulator: The articulator which moves to form a constriction in
the vocal tract. For example, in palatal sounds the active articulator is
the front of the tongue which moves towards the hard palate.
Advanced: Produced slightly further forward in the vocal tract. For
instance, the first consonant in the English word keen is an advanced velar
and is produced with a closure towards the front of the velum.
Affricate: A consonant sound produced with a complete closure between two
articulators and with velic closure preventing air escaping via the nasal
cavity. The articulators part relatively slowly and the compressed air
escaping between them becomes turbulent resulting in audible friction noise.
[ts dZ kx] are examples of affricates.
Air-stream mechanism: One of a number of ways in which airflow can be
created in the vocal tract for the purpose of producing speech sounds.
Allotone: A pitch configuration considered as a positional variant of a
toneme. For example, Modern Standard Chinese Tone 3 has a terminal rise in
pitch when found before a pause, but lacks this terminal rise when not
before a pause. These two pitch configurations can be regarded as allotones
of the Tone 3 toneme.
Allophone: A speech sound considered as a positional variant of a phoneme.
So, for instance, in Spanish the two sounds [b] and [B] are allophones of
the phoneme /b/. The bilabial fricative [B] occurs word-internally between
vowels and the plosive [b] occurs in other environments.
Alphabetic writing system: A system of writing, like that used for English,
where the symbols used represent the individual vowels and consonants of the
language.
Alternation: The situation where a word or word-part turns up in different
phonological forms in different environments. For example, the English
plural ending s is /s/ if the preceding sound is voiceless, as in books /bUks/,
but it is /z/ if the preceding sound is voiced, as in dogs /dQgz/.
Alveolar ridge: The front part of the roof of the mouth, just behind the
upper front teeth.
Alveolar: The name of a place of articulation. The active articulator is the
tip or blade of the tongue. The passive articulator is the alveolar ridge.
[t s n] are examples of alveolar sounds.
Ambient noise: Noise in the environment which may interfere with the
recording of sounds.
Amplitude: A measure of the up-and-down extent of a waveform (as distinct
from its frequency). For a sound wave, the extent of pressure variation
above or below atmospheric pressure.
Aperiodic: Of a waveform, one which does not have a regular repeating
pattern.
Approximant: A consonant sound made with a constriction between two
articulators which is not narrow enough to cause air turbulence. [w l j] are
examples of approximants.
Articulation: A constriction of the vocal tract.
Articulators: The parts of the vocal tract involved in the production of
speech sounds: the lips, teeth, tongue, alveolar ridge, hard palate, soft
palate, uvula, pharyngeal wall and vocal folds.
Arytenoid cartilages: Two small cone-shaped cartilages which sit on the
upper surface of the cricoid cartilage. The vocal folds are attached at the
back to the arytenoids and the positioning of the cartilages is largely
responsible for the position of and tension of the folds.
Aspiration: Weak friction noise heard on the release of a plosive sound. The
noise is caused by air moving at high speed through the vocal tract.
Aspiration is associated with plosives which have a long voice onset time.
Assimilation: A phonological process which involves a change in a speech
sound to make it more similar to some sound in its environment. An example
from English: the word ten which is /ten/ in most environments may become
/tem/ if the following word begins with a bilabial consonant, as for example
in the phrase ten books, which may be pronounced /tem bUks/.
Audiogram: A graph showing the sensitivity of a human subject to sounds at
various frequencies.
Audiometer: A device capable of producing tones of precise frequency and
intensity which is used to test human sensitivity to sound at various
frequencies.
Auditory canal: the channel which leads from the outer part of the ear to
the eardrum.
Back (of tongue): The part of the tongue which lies below the soft palate
when the tongue is at rest.
Bilabial: The name of a place of articulation. The articulators are the
upper and lower lips. [p b m] are examples of bilabial sounds.
Binary: Of phonological features, taking one of two opposite values. So for
example, speech sounds may be classified as [+nasal] if they are made with
the velum lowered or [-nasal] if not.
Blade (of tongue): The part of the tongue which lies below the alveolar
ridge when the tongue is at rest.
Breathy voice: A type of phonation in which the pattern of vocal fold
vibration allows the escape of relatively large amounts of air in each cycle
of vibration, producing audible noise along with voicing.
Cardinal vowels: A set of agreed vowel qualities used as a reference for the
purposes of describing vowels encountered in speech.
Categorical perception: A characteristic of the perception of certain speech
sounds. Sounds are said to be perceived categorically if there is a sharp
cross-over from one perceptual category to another and if, in addition,
human listeners are unable to distinguish between acoustically different
sounds which fall in the same category.
Click: A sound produced with an ingressive velaric airstream mechanism.
Coarticulation: The adjustments made to the articulation of a speech sound
under the influence of neighbouring sounds. For instance, the first
consonant in the English word queen [kwi:n] is likely to be produced with
rounded lips because it is followed immediately by a lip-rounded sound.
Cochlea: The organ of hearing. A spiral structure in the inner ear where
mechanical vibrations are converted to nerve impulses.
Coda: A syllable constituent consisting of any consonant sounds following
the syllable nucleus.
Complex periodic tone: A sound, such as a vowel sound, whose waveform can be
analysed as the sum of two or more sine waves.
Compression: The rise in air pressure in an enclosed space caused by a
decrease in the size of the space without outflow of air.
Continuum: A series of synthetic speech tokens used as stimuli in a speech
perception experiment. Each member of the continuum is acoustically
identical to the others except in the value of the particular acoustic
feature under investigation.
Consonant: Sounds made with a relatively close constriction or complete
closure in the vocal tract and which occur singly or in clusters at the
edges of syllables.
Context-sensitive voicing: A phenomenon where the voicing of consonant
sounds is determined by the context in which they appear. For example, young
children often go through a stage in the development of their speech when
all obstruent consonants are always voiced if they are immediately followed
by a vowel and are always voiceless in other contexts.
Contour tone: A lexical tone which changes in pitch.
Contrast: The situation where a phonetic difference is capable of signalling
a difference between words in a particular language. So for example, vowel
nasalisation or lack of it in French can change the identity of a word, as
can be seen with the pair of words mot /mo/ "word" and mon /mo~/ "my". So
there is a contrast between oral and nasalised vowels in French. English,
while it has oral and nasalised vowels, never uses the difference to signal
the difference between words.
Creaky voice: A type of phonation in which the vocal folds vibrate at a low
frequency (and usually somewhat irregularly) with a very low rate of airflow
through the glottis.
Cricoid cartilage: A ring-shaped cartilage at the top of the windpipe. It is
attached to the thyroid cartilage; the arytenoid cartilages sit on its upper
surface at the rear.
Cue redundancy: The presence of more acoustic cues than are logically
necessary to signal a perceptual distinction between speech sounds.
CV skeleton: A representation of the structure of a word or phrase in terms
of the sequence of consonant and vowel sounds it contains. C is used to
represent consonants and V to represent vowels. For instance, CVCV is the CV
skeleton for English words such as below, city, data.
Defective vowel system: A type of vowel system, found in a small number of
languages, which does not conform to the Vowel Dispersion Principle, either
because it lacks open vowels or because, for mid and high vowels, there is
an asymmetry of front and back vowels.
Degree of stricture: The narrowness of the space between two articulators
during the production of a sound.
Dental: The name of a place of articulation. The active articulator is the
tip or blade of the tongue. The passive articulator is the upper front
teeth. [T D ] are examples of dental sounds.
Devoiced: Of a sound normally voiced, produced without vocal fold vibration
for part or all of its duration.
Diacritic: A small mark placed near or attached to a phonetic symbol which
is used to modify the usual meaning of the symbol or to supply further
phonetic detail. For instance, [mß] represents a voiceless bilabial nasal
whereas the symbol alone without the diacritic represents a voiced bilabial
nasal.
Diphthong: A vowel which changes quality within a single syllable. An
example of a diphthong in English is [aI], in such words as fine, time,
sight.
Discrimination curve: A graph showing how well human listeners can
distinguish between adjacent stimuli on an acoustic continuum.
Distribution: The environments in which a speech sound may occur in a
particular language.
Double articulation: An articulation in which there are two simultaneous
constrictions of the vocal tract. The two constrictions are of equal
narrowness. [w] is an example of a double articulation.
Eardrum: A membrane stretched across the auditory canal and dividing the
outer ear from the middle ear. The eardrum converts pressure variation into
mechanical movement.
Egressive: Of an airstream mechanism, one which pushes air out of the vocal
tract.
Electropalatography: An instrumental technique for investigating the pattern
of contact of the tongue with the roof of the mouth during speech sounds.
Tongue contact is recorded by electrodes embedded in an artificial palate
worn by the speaker.
Elision: The omission of a sound. For example, the voiceless alveolar
plosive phoneme may be elided in a phrase like last month, giving the
pronunciation /lA:s mVnT/ rather than /lA:st mVnT/.
Ejective: A sound produced with an egressive glottalic airstream mechanism.
Ending: Another term for suffix. Sounds (or letters in the written form)
added to the end of a word to indicate verb tense, the plural of nouns and
the like. For example, the regular plural ending for English nouns is one of
/s z Iz/, the choice depending on the last sound of the noun concerned.
Environment: The environment of a sound is the preceding and following sound
or sounds. Statements of environments may also include the symbol #, which
means a word boundary. For example, in a word like bring [b£IN], the
environment of [£] is [b] __ [I] and that of [N] is [I] __ #.
Excitation: See Input.
Feature: See phonological feature.
Fibrescope: A flexible bundle of light-transmitting fibres used to collect
an image from inaccessible areas inside the human body.
Fixed stress language: A language where the position of the primary stress
is the same for the vast majority of words. For example, Polish is a fixed
stress language because nearly all words have primary stress on the
penultimate syllable.
Flap: A consonant produced by making the active articulator strike the
passive articulator in passing. [±] is an example of a flap
Formant frequency: The frequency at which a peak in energy occurs in the
spectrum of a speech sound.
Formant: A peak in the spectrum of a speech sound such as a vowel.
Fortis: Produced with increased muscular tension. Fortis speech sounds are
normally voiceless.
Free stress: the same as variable stress.
Frequency: The rate of repetition of a cycle of vibration. Frequency is
measured in Hertz (Hz). 1 Hz is one cycle per second, so for example if a
periodic waveform repeats 100 times in a second, its frequency is 100 Hz.
Fricative: A consonant sound produced with a narrow constriction of the
vocal tract which causes the airstream to become turbulent, resulting in
audible friction noise. [s Z G] are examples of fricatives,
Frictionless continuant: an older term for approximant.
Front (of tongue): The part of the tongue which lies below the hard palate
when the tongue is at rest.
Glide: an older term for approximant.
Glottal: The name of a place of articulation. The articulators are the vocal
folds. [? h] are examples of glottal sounds.
Glottal Stop: The sound symbolised [?]. It is produced by closing the vocal
folds tightly, blocking the airstream from the lungs.
Glottalic: The name of an airstream mechanism in which the closed vocal
folds inititate the airflow. Ejective consonants are produced with an
egressive glottalic airstream and implosives with an ingressive one.
Glottis: The space between the vocal folds.
Heavy syllable: A syllable which contains a long vowel or diphthong, or
alternatively a short vowel followed by more than one consonant.
Height (of vowels): An auditory property of vowels, corresponding with the
degree of raising of the highest point of the tongue during the production
of a vowel.
Homophone: One of a pair (or larger set) of words which sound exactly the
same when spoken, but which mean different things. For example, the words
write, right, rite and wright are homophones in English, all being
pronounced [raIt].
Implosive: A sound produced with an ingressive glottalic airstream
mechanism.
Impressionistic transcription: A transcription of speech which represents
its superficial auditory effect, but is not made in accordance with a stable
and economical system of symbols worked out to suit the phonological
structure of the language involved.
Infrasound: Low frequency vibration below the lower frequency limits of
normal human hearing.
Ingressive: Of an airstream, one which pulls air into the vocal tract.
Initiator: The part of the vocal tract which moves in order to create a rise
or fall in air pressure, resulting in flow out of or into the vocal tract.
For instance, in the pulmonic airstream mechanism the initiator is the walls
of the lungs.
Input: The energy introduced into a resonating system. An alternative term
is “excitation”.
The input to the vocal tract is essentially of two kinds: (1) periodic
energy produced by the vibration of the vocal folds (2) aperiodic energy
produced by air turbulence caused by a narrow constriction or complete
closure between two articulators. Some speech sounds, voiced fricatives
especially, are produced with a combination of these two sorts of input.
International Phonetic Alphabet: A set of internationally agreed symbols
used for representing speech sounds.
IPA: The International Phonetic Association or The International Phonetic
Alphabet.
Intonational phrase: A group of words accompanied by a complete well-formed
intonation pattern.
Key: An intonational feature which affects the pitch characteristics of a
whole intonational phrase. If an intonational phrase is produced with high
key, then all of the pitch values are higher. Similarly, low key makes all
pitch values in the phrase lower.
Labelling curve: A graph showing the results of a labelling experiment. The
horizontal axis shows the points in the acoustic continuum under
investigation. The vertical axis shows the percentage responses for one of
the two response labels for the experiment.
Labelling experiment: A speech perception experiment where large numbers of
synthetic speech tokens are presented to human subjects. The subjects’ task
is to respond to each token with one of two labels. For example, the
subjects might be asked whether they hear each token as the word coat or as
the word goat. The stimuli for the experiment are taken from an acoustic
continuum of stimuli, but are presented in random order.
Labialisation: A secondary articulation involving the rounding of the lips.
Labial-palatal: The name of a double articulation with simultaneous
articulations at the lips and at the hard palate. [H] is an example of a
labial-palatal sound.
Labial-velar: The name of a double articulation with simultaneous
articulations at the lips and at the velum. [w] is an example of a
labial-velar sound.
Labiodental: The name of a place of articulation. The active articulator is
the lower lip. The passive articulator is the upper front teeth. [f v] are
examples of labiodental sounds.
Laminar flow: A characteristic of flow in a fluid such as air or water where
the particles which make up the fluid move in parallel paths and there are
few if any collisions between the particles. Laminar airflow does not create
any sound.
Laryngograph: An electronic device which records vocal fold vibration by
means of two electrodes placed externally on a speaker’s neck. A small
electric current is passed through the neck and the laryngograph measures
the changing resistance of the neck to the passage of the current. When the
vocal folds are in contact, the resistance is lower than when they are
apart.
Larynx: A structure made of cartilage and connective tissue at the lower end
of the vocal tract and above the windpipe, containing the vocal folds.
Lateral: Of an approximant or fricative, produced with a complete closure on
the midline of the vocal tract, but with one or both sides of the tongue
lowered and not contacting the side teeth or gums, so that the air escapes
over the sides of the tongue. [l K] are examples of lateral sounds.
Lenis: Produced with reduced muscular tension. Lenis speech sounds are
usually voiced.
Lenition: A phonological process involving the change from a stronger sound
to a weaker one, where stronger sounds are defined as having a more radical
obstruction to airflow than weaker ones. For example, the change from a
plosive to a fricative in certain environments is lenition and so is the
change from a fricative to an approximant. In addition, voiceless sounds are
stronger than voiced ones.
Lexical tone: The use of a small number of contrasting pitch patterns to
distinguish words from one another.
Light syllable: A syllable which contains a short vowel followed by a
maximum of one consonant.
Location (of vowels): The part of the tongue (front, centre, or back) which
is raised highest in the oral cavity for the production of a vowel sound.
Logographic writing system: A writing system, such as that for Chinese,
where the symbols used represent whole words, rather than the sounds or
syllables which make up the word.
Long vowel: A vowel of relatively long duration when compared to a vowel of
similar or identical quality in the same vowel system.
Loudness: The subjective impression of the magnitude of a sound. Loudness is
connected with the amplitude of the waveform of the sound.
McGurk effect: A perceptual effect demonstrating that visual cues influence
speech perception. A video of the speaker’s face is overdubbed with the
soundtrack of an utterance different from the one which the viewer is
seeing. The visual and auditory cues may be integrated by the hearer and the
resulting perception can differ from both of the speaker’s utterances.
Magnetic resonance imaging: A non-hazardous technique for producing images
of the interior of the body. The technique involves applying a very strong
magnetic field to the body, followed by a radio-frequency pulse specific to
hydrogen.
Manner of articulation: The way in which the articulators interfere with and
direct the airstream for the purposes of producing speech sounds. Manner of
articulation is a complex of features such as degree of stricture, speed of
articulator movement, soft palate position and the like.
Meatus: another name for the auditory canal.
Median: Of a fricative or approximant sound, articulated in such a way that
the air escapes down the midline of the vocal tract.
Minimal pair: A pair of words which differ in only one phoneme. An example
from French: peau /po/ "skin" and beau /bo/ "beautiful".
Modal voice: A phonation type in which the vocal folds snap shut rapidly and
peel apart relatively slowly. Most speech is produced with modal voice.
Monophthong: A vowel sound which does not change in quality.
Monosyllable: A word consisting of a single syllable, such as do and snap in
English.
Nasal (stop): A consonant sound produced with a complete closure in the
mouth but without velic closure so that the airstream escapes only through
the nasal cavity. [m J N] are examples of nasals.
Nasal cavity: The large cavity above the roof of the mouth, connected to the
upper part of the pharynx at the rear and having the nostrils at the front.
Nasalised vowel: A vowel sound produced without velic closure so that air
escapes simultaneously through the oral cavity and the nasal cavity.
Nuclear tone: One of a small number of pitch configurations associated with
the nucleus and any following syllables in the intonational phrase.
Nucleus: (1) The syllable which bears the last accent in an intonational
phrase. (2) The only obligatory component of a syllable.
Neutralisation: The suspension, in certain environments, of a phonetic
contrast normally found in a language. For example, voicing is contrastive
for obstruent consonants in German, except at the end of words, where only
voiceless consonants are permitted.
Non-pulmonic: Of airstreams mechanisms, not involving the lungs as an
initiator. The two non-pulmonic airstream mechanisms used for speech sounds
are glottalic and velaric.
Obstruent: A sound which is produced with a constriction narrow enough to
cause an appreciable rise in air pressure inside the vocal tract. Plosives,
affricates and fricatives are all obstruents.
Octave: An interval between two musical notes in a scale. If the frequency
of any note is doubled, the result is the same note, but one octave higher.
Onset: A syllable constituent consisting of any consonant sounds preceding
the syllable nucleus.
Oral: A sound produced with velic closure to prevent nasal escape of air, so
that the airstream escapes through the oral cavity alone.
Oral cavity: The mouth. The cavity bounded by the lips at the front and
joined to the pharynx at the rear.
Oral vowel: A vowel sound where all of the air escapes via the oral cavity
and where there is no nasal airflow.
Ossicles: The three small bones of the middle ear which act as a linkage
between the eardum and the oval window.
Oval window: An opening into the cochlea, covered by a membrane, to which
mechanical movement is transmitted from the eardrum via the ossicles.
Palatal: The name of a place of articulation. The active articulator is the
front of the tongue. The passive articulator is the hard palate. [j J] are
examples of palatal sounds.
Palatalisation: A secondary articulation in which the front of the tongue is
raised towards the hard palate.
Palatogram: A record of the pattern of contact between the tongue and the
roof of the mouth during the production of a speech sound.
Parametric diagram: A diagram showing the estimated movements or activity of
various parts of the vocal tract such as the soft palate and the vocal
folds.
Paralinguistic feature: a feature of speech, such as loudness or voice
quality, used to convey speaker attitude rather than linguistic meaning.
Passive articulator: The stationary articulator involved in forming a
constriction in the vocal tract. For instance, the hard palate is the
passive articulator for both palatal and retroflex sounds.
Periodic: Of a waveform, regularly repeating in time.
Pinna: the outer, visible part of the ear.
Pharyngeal: The name of a place of articulation. The active articulator is
the root of the tongue. The passive articulator is the rear wall of the
pharynx. [‘ ] are examples of pharyngeal sounds.
Pharyngealisation: A secondary articulation in which the root of the tongue
is retracted and approaches the rear wall of the pharynx.
Pharynx: The part of the vocal tract immediately above the larynx.
Phonation: The generation of voice in the larynx, by vibration of the vocal
folds.
Phoneme: A set of speech sounds which form a basic contrastive unit in a
language. For example in English, the set which contains the sounds [l 5 l~
5~ lß], amongst others, is the /l/ phoneme. The members (or allophones) do
not contrast with one another in the language in question.
Phonetic Symbol: A symbol representing a speech sound.
Phonetic Transcription: The representation of speech using phonetic symbols.
Phonological feature: One of a small set of labels used to specify an aspect
of the articulation (or of the acoustic properties) of a speech sound or a
set of speech sounds. For example, the phonological feature [anterior] is
used to distinguish those sounds produced on or in front of the alveolar
ridge from those sounds produced further back in the vocal tract.
Phonological process: A widespread phonological phenomenon such as
assimilation, elision or lenition.
Phonotactics: The patterning of permissible phoneme sequences in syllables.
Pitch: The perceptual attribute of a sound which enables the hearer to
locate the sound on a scale from high to low. The physical correlate of
pitch is the frequency of the sound.
Place of articulation: The point within the vocal tract where a constriction
is formed to produce a consonant sound. The place of articulation is defined
by the active and passive articulators involved.
Plosive: A consonant sound produced with a complete closure between two
articulators and with velic closure preventing air escaping via the nasal
cavity. The articulators part rapidly allowing rapid release of the
compressed air without any accompanying friction noise. [p d c q] are
examples of plosive sounds.
Postalveolar: The name of a place of articulation. The active articulator is
the tip or blade of the tongue. The passive articulator is the rear of the
alveolar ridge. [£ S Z] are examples of postalveolar sounds.
Pre-fortis clipping: The reduction in duration of sonorant sounds when
followed in the same syllable by a fortis consonant. For example, the vowel
in the English word seat [si:t] is clipped, whereas that in seed [si:d] is
not.
Pressure: The molecules which make up a gas such as air are constantly
moving and colliding with the surface of objects which contain the gas. The
force created by the sum of these collisions is the pressure of the gas.
Pressure is measured in force per unit area.
Primary articulation: The narrowest constriction in the vocal tract during
the production of a speech sound.
Primary stress: See Stress.
Prosodic: the same as suprasegmental
Pulmonic: The name of an airstream mechanism in which the lungs initiate the
airflow. The majority of sounds of human speech are produced with a pulmonic
egressive airstream.
Pure tone: The sound associated with a sine wave.
Rarefaction: The fall in air pressure in an enclosed space caused by an
increase in the size of the space without inflow of air.
Register tone: A lexical tone with a level pitch contour.
Resonant frequency: The frequency at which an acoustic system vibrates when
excited by input energy.
Retracted: Produced slightly further back in the vocal tract. For instance,
the first consonant in the English word trip is a retracted alveolar and is
produced at the back of the alveolar ridge.
Retroflex: The name of a place of articulation. The active articulator is
the tip of the tongue. The passive articulator is the hard palate. [µ † ´]
are examples of retroflex sounds.
Rhyme: A syllable constituent consisting of the syllable nucleus plus the
coda.
Roll: Another term for trill.
Root (of tongue): The very back part of the tongue which faces the rear wall
of the pharynx.
Rounded: Of a vowel, produced with rounded lips. [y u o O] are examples of
rounded vowels.
Rule: A statement of a phonological phenomenon in terms of the input (the
sounds affected), the output (he changes made), and the context in which the
change occurs. An example is: [-son] > [-voi] / __ [-voi]. This means: any
obstruent (the input) becomes voiceless (the output) before another
voiceless sound (the context).
Sampling rate: The frequency with samples are taken from a waveform for the
purposes of digitising speech. For example, a sampling rate of 10kHz means
that each second of the waveform is represented by 10,000 equally spaced
samples.
Secondary articulation: A constriction of the vocal tract which takes place
at the same time as a narrower constriction elsewhere. [5] is an example of
a sound where the secondary articulation is formed by the tongue back being
raised towards the soft palate while at the same the tongue tip makes the
primary articulation (a complete closure on the alveolar ridge).
Secondary stress: See Stress.
Segment: Another term for speech sound.
Semivowel: A type of approximant sound, like [w] or [j], whose articulation
is very similar to that of a vowel.
Short vowel: A vowel of relatively short duration when compared to a vowel
of similar or identical quality in the same vowel system.
Sine wave: A waveform with a simple shape and a single constant frequency
and constant amplitude.
Soft palate: The rear part of the roof of the mouth.
Sonorant: An articulation where the constriction is not so narrow, or is not
of sufficient duration, as to cause an appreciable rise in air pressure
inside the vocal tract. Vowels, nasals, approximants, taps, flaps and trills
are all sonorants.
Spectrum: A visual display of the relative amplitudes of the different
frequency components of a sound such as a vowel.
Stop: A consonant sound which involves a complete closure in the oral
cavity. Plosives, affricates and nasals are all stops.
Stress: The relative prominence of syllables. In many languages one (or
more) syllables in a word are produced louder and longer than others. These
syllables are said to be stressed. Examples from English: butter, teaching
(first syllable stressed) and resign, unsure (second syllable stressed). In
many languages there is more than one degree of stress. So, for example, in
the English word international there is a primary stress on the third
syllable and a secondary stress on the first syllable: [%Int@"n{Sn@l].
Stress-timed language: A language whose rhythm shows perceptually equal time
intervals between stressed syllables.
Stroboscope: A device which can take a series of photographs very rapidly.
Adjustment of the timing of the photographs can appear to freeze, or slow
down, very rapid periodic motion.
Suprasegmental: A name for features such as stress, lexical tone and
intonation, which affect more than one segment.
Syllabary: A system of writing where the symbols used represent whole
syllables rather than the individual consonants and vowels which make up the
syllable.
Syllabic: Of a speech sound, capable of forming the core of a syllable. In
most languages vowels are the only syllabic sounds, but some consonants,
mainly sonorants, are also used as syllabic sounds in some languages.
Syllable: A phonological structure composed of speech sounds. Words are made
up of syllables. The syllable is the domain of association for such
phenomena as stress and lexical tone.
Syllable-timed language: A language whose rhythm is based on perceptually
equal duration of syllables.
Synthetic speech: An electronic simulation of human speech.
Tap: A consonant sounds produced by making the active articulator strike the
passive articulator for a very brief duration. [4] is an example of a tap.
Thyroid cartilage: The largest cartilage of the larynx. It is attached to
the cricoid cartilage below and is supported by muscles attached to the
bones of the skull. The front ends of the focal folds are attached to its
inner surface.
Tip (of tongue): The extreme front end of the tongue.
Tone: See lexical tone.
Toneme: A group of pitch configurations which are functionally equivalent in
a particular lexical tone language.
Trill: A consonant sound where the active articulator vibrates rapidly
striking the passive articulator repeatedly. [r ³] are examples of trills.
Turbulent flow: A characteristic of flow in a fluid such as air or water
where the particles which make up the fluid move in a chaotic, unpredictable
fashion. The particles collide with each other and the energy created by
these collisions is heard as noise.
Tympanic membrane: Another name for the eardrum.
Ultrasound: High frequency vibration above the upper frequency limit of
normal human hearing.
Unrounded: Of a vowel, produced without rounding of the lips. [i a M] are
examples of unrounded vowels.
Uvula: The fleshy protuberance which hangs from the end of the soft palate.
Uvular: The name of a place of articulation. The active articulator is the
back of the tongue. The passive articulator is the uvula. [q Œ ª] are
examples of uvular sounds.
Variable stress language: A language where the primary stress is not fixed
to a particular position in a word.
Velar: The name of a place of articulation. The active articulator is the
back of the tongue. The passive articulator is the soft palate. [k g N] are
examples of velar sounds.
Velaric: The name of an airstream mechanism in which the airflow is
intitiated by a closure of the back of the tongue on the velum. Clicks are
produced with a velaric ingressive airstream.
Velarisation: A secondary articulation in which the back of the tongue is
raised towards the velum.
Velic closure: The closure formed by raising the soft palate to contact the
rear wall of the pharynx. Oral sounds are produced with velic closure, which
prevents air escaping via the nasal cavity.
Velopharyngeal: The same as velic.
Velum: Another name for the soft palate.
Vocal cords: An older term for the vocal folds.
Vocal folds: Two folds of tissue with embedded muscle and ligaments found
inside the larynx. They are attached at the back to the arytenoid cartilages
and at the front to the inner surface of the thyroid cartilage. Their
vibration is the source of the periodic energy for human speech sounds.
Vocal tract: The oral cavity, nasal cavity, pharynx and larynx.
Voice Onset Time: The time lapse, measured in milliseconds, between the
release of a plosive sound and the onset of voicing for the following sound.
Voice onset time is an important perceptual cue for voicing of plosives.
VOT: The abbreviation for Voice Onset Time
Vowel Dispersion Principle: The tendency for vowel systems to consist of
qualities which are widely and evenly dispersed in perceptual space.
Vowel system: The set of contrastive vowel qualities found in a particular
language.
Vowel: A sound produced without a close obstruction in the vocal tract and
which forms the centre of a syllable.
Wav file: One common format for storing sounds as computer files.
Waveform: A visual representation of the variation of air pressure caused by
a sound. The horizontal axis represents time and the vertical axis
represents pressure variation above and below atmospheric pressure.