sidfn

F The normal symbol used to denote frequency.
F0 [ˌef ˈzɪərəʊ] An abbreviation or symbol for fundamental frequency.
F1 The usual abbreviation for the lowest frequency formant. Higher formants are numbered F2, F3 etc.
F1-cutback The loss of the initial part of the F1 transition following a voiceless plosive sound.
Faithfulness constraint One of a number of constraints on phonological structure posited by Optimality Theory. Faithfulness constraints ensure that the output form of the phonology is as close as possible to the input form. An example of such a constraint is MAX-IO: the deletion of segments is prohibited. Faithfulness constraints may be violated in a particular language, because they are ranked lower than some other constraint.
Falling diphthong A diphthong where the initial quality has more prominence than the target quality
Fall rise The name of a nuclear tone in many analyses of English intonation. The pitch characteristics are as follows: the pitch contour starts near the top of the speaker's range and falls rapidly to a low pitch and then rises again to around mid pitch. If the nucleus is followed by tail syllables the falling part of the pattern is accomplished on the nucleus itself. The rise occurs at the end of the tail and any intervening syllables are low and level. See O'Connor & Arnold for more information.
Falsetto voice [fɒlˈsetəʊ] A phonation type which involves high longitudinal tension of the vocal folds, resulting in higher than normal pitch. The tension of the folds also prevents them making firm contact with each other, leading to constant leakage of air which generates a weak friction noise.
False vocal folds Also called ventricular or vestibular folds. Two folds of mucous membrane enclosing a band of fibrous tissue and lying above the vocal folds in the larynx. They play little part in normal phonation.
Faucalised [ˈfɔːkəlaɪzd] Produced with an expanded pharyngeal cavity. The Bor dialect of Dinka is reported to use faucalisation distinctively. The suggested diacritic for faucalised sounds is [^Ħ].
Feature geometry In recent phonological theories the idea that segments are composed of unstructured lists of features has been replaced by a model in which features are grouped together in bundles or gestures. There are a number of competing feature geometries in the literature, which differ in detail, but which are similar in overall structure. The structure has a ROOT node dominating a branching tree structure. This node itself can be marked with features, usually [consonantal] and [sonorant] (or the equivalent elements) and dominates a number of other nodes, including PLACE and LARYNGEAL. The motivations for this more complex segment structure are various, but include rule simplicity. For example, place of articulation assimilation can be viewed as the copying of the PLACE node from one segment to another without having to reference the individual feature that the node dominates.
Feature synthesis A child phonology process. Features from two consonants in an adult target cluster are combined in a single segment which is the child's attempt at the cluster. For instance, the word snow may be produced as [n̥əʊ], where the voiceless alveolar nasal combines the voicelessness of the adult [s] and the nasality and alveolar place of the adult [n].
Feeding A feature of rule ordering. Two rules are said to be in a feeding order if the earlier rule creates environments in which the later rule can apply. Imagine two rules, the first of which changes the value of the feature [nasal] from - to + for some consonants in a certain environment and the second of which changes the feature of nasal from - to + for vowels before [+nasal] consonants. After the operation of the first rule there will be more vowels before [+nasal] consonants for the second rule to apply to. See also bleeding.
FFT See fourier analysis.
Filled pause A non-silent pause, that is a hesitation filled by some vocalisation such as ahm, er, erm.
Filter An acoustic or electronic device (or a computer simulation of such) which responds differentially in the frequency domain to its input. A high-pass filter attenuates the input in the low frequency region. A band-pass filter attenuates both the low and high frequency regions. A band-stop filter attenuates the input in the mid frequency range. A low-pass filter attenuates high frequencies.
Final lowering The gradual compression and downward shift of the pitch range which occurs in anticipation of the end of a declarative sentence in languages such as English. Final lowering means that the final accent in a sequence is lower in fundamental frequency than predicted by the location of the preceding accent.
Final obstruent devoicing A phonological constraint which is found in a number of the world's languages. Only voiceless obstruents may occur (1) immediately preceding a voiceless sound (2) finally in some domain, usually the word. Details differ somewhat from language to language. Some of the languages displaying the constraint are: Dutch, German, Maltese, Polish, Russian, Tok Pisin. The voiceless nature of the obstruents involved is often not reflected in the orthography of the language. For instance, German bunt and Bund are both pronounced [bʊnt].
Final syllable lengthening The increase in duration of a syllable before a pause or before an intonational boundary.
Fis phenomenon A feature of the acquisition of speech by children. The name comes from an incident reported in Berko J. & Brown R. (1960, Psycholinguistic Research Methods, in Mussen, P. (ed.) Handbook of Research Methods in Child Development , New York, John Wiley, 517-577). A child called his toy [fɪs]. When asked: "Is this your [fɪs]?", he said no. But when asked: "Is this your [fɪʃ]", he said: "Yes, my [fɪs]." This is evidence that children's perceptual abilities are in advance of their productive abilities.
Fixed stress A term applied to languages where all (or the majority of) words bear primary lexical stress on the same syllable. Examples of fixed stress languages are: Czech (1st syllable stressed), Welsh and Polish (penultimate syllable stressed) and Turkish (final syllable stressed).
Flap The name of a manner of articulation. The active articulator strikes the passive articulator in passing. The prime example of a flap articulation is [ɽ], which is a voiced retroflex flap. The tip and blade of the tongue are curled back behind the alveolar ridge and move rapidly forward so that the under side of the blade strikes the rear of the alveolar ridge.
Focus [ˈfəʊkəs] A linguistic device which a speaker uses to mark some part of the message as being particularly newsworthy. Focus devices include syntactic reorganisation (such as topicalisation and clefting), the use of of focus particles, and intonational accent placement. Languages differ in the frequency of use of these differing strategies. Broad focus is used when the speaker wishes the whole of an utterance to be thought of as new information. Narrow focus draws the attention of the hearer to one particular constituent, usually because the rest of the message contains information which is regarded as "old" or at least inferrable from the context.
Foot A unit of rhythm. Most phoneticians view the foot as having the structure SU₀, where S = stressed syllable and U = unstressed syllable, that is a foot begins with a stressed syllable which is followed by zero or more unstressed syllables. An example: ˈMary ˈhad a ˈlittle ˈlamb consists of four feet: Mary, had a, little, and lamb. See also anacrusis.
Forensic phonetics [fəˈrenzɪk] The application of phonetic techniques to provide evidence in civil or criminal cases. Typical evidence includes the production of accurate transcriptions of recorded conversations, phone calls and the like, and recording comparison for the purposes of voice identification.
Formant [ˈfɔːmənt] One of a number of peaks in the amplitude frequency spectrum of a sound. The first three formant frequencies, F1, F2 and F3 are important cues to the identity of vowels and sonorant consonants. F1 correlates inversely with the height of a vowel and F2 correlates with the frontness of a vowel.
Formant transition The rapid change in frequency of a formant for a vowel immediately before or after a consonant. The F2 transition is a very important acoustic cue to the place of articulation of a consonant. The F1 transition signals information about the manner of articulation of a consonant.
Fortis [ˈfɔːtɪs] See lenis.
Fortition [fɔːˈtɪʃn] A phonological process whereby a sound is replaced by one which is stronger in the sense that it is produced with an articulation which presents a greater obstacle to airflow through the vocal tract. In effect this means that fricatives are replaced by plosives or that voiced sounds are replaced by voiceless sounds. The opposite of fortition is lenition.
Fourier analysis [ˈfʊriə] A mathematical technique used to transform a signal in the time domain to a frequency domain representation. In terms of speech research this essentially means the production of an amplitude-frequency spectrum by processing a sampled version of the speech pressure waveform of a sound. The equation used is known as a Discrete Fourier Transform (DFT). This is given below:

where X=a value in the frequency domain, x=a value in the time domain, N=the total number of time domain sample points.
A related technique, known as Fourier Synthesis, produces a sampled time domain representation from a frequency domain representation, using the Inverse DFT:

In practice one of a number of available computationally efficient algorithms is used to perform the transformations. These are known as Fast Fourier Transforms (FFT).
Fourier synthesis See above entry.
Free variation The situation where two (or more) sounds may appear in an identical environment and yet the difference between them is not phonologically relevant in the sense that it is not capable of signalling the difference between one word and another. For example, both unaspirated [t] and aspirated [tʰ] may occur word-finally in many accents of English. The choice of one or the other is never capable of changing the meaning of a word.
Free stress A term applied to languages where primary lexical stress is not fixed to a particular syllable. English and Russian are examples of free stress languages. The location of stress in such languages may be influenced by a number of factors such as the lexical class of a word and the composition of the syllables within a word.
Frequency The rate of repetition of an acoustic waveform. Frequency is measured in hertz (Hz). A frequency of 100 Hz, for example, means that the waveform repeats 100 times per second.
Fricative [ˈfrɪkətɪv] The name of a manner of articulation. Fricative sounds are produced with a narrow space between the active and passive articulators and an airflow strong enough to cause air turbulence when it travels through this constriction. Fricatives may be median (examples [f s ʃ x]) or lateral (example [ɬ]).
Frictionless continuant See approximant.
Front vowel A vowel which is produced with the highest point of the tongue at the front of the vowel area, that is beneath the hard palate. Examples: [i y e].

Fronting A child phonology process. Many children at some stage of the acquisition of the phonology of their native language replace sounds made towards the back of the oral cavity with equivalent sounds made further forward. Typically, velar consonants are replaced by alveolars, as in the child pronunciation [tɑː] for car.

Function word Another name for grammatical item. See lexical item for details.

Fundamental frequency The basic rate of repetition of a complex periodic waveform, measured in Hz. A complex waveform may be viewed as the result of the addition of a number of sinusoidal waveforms of differing frequencies and amplitudes. The waveform's fundamental frequency is the highest common factor of the frequencies of the component waveforms. For instance, a complex waveform with components at 150, 200 and 350 Hz would have a fundamental frequency of 50 Hz. Notice that the spectrum of such a waveform does not contain a component at 50 Hz. Such a situation is sometimes known as a missing fundamental. The fundamental frequency of speech is related to the perception of pitch.

Fuzzy logical model A model of perception, including speech perception, which emphasises the importance of the integration of multiple information sources. See Massaro for further information.

Fx See laryngograph.

F-Zero Another term for fundamental frequency.