Exam 1998 Question 5
" Explain the statement: "information about the identity of a consonant can be found in the adjoining vowel". Discuss the extent to which phonetic information about consonant place is encoded in an invariant sound."
20 things you should mention:
- Identity
- articulation is smooth and continuously changing
- from target position from consonant to target for vowel
- articulatory path at any instant affected by both current segment and neighbouring segments
- response of v.t. and hence shaping of excitation affected by articulatory shape
- spectrographic pattern changes as articulation changes
- in particular major resonances move (formant transitions)
- for segments such as plosives, the formant transitions depend on the place of the stop
- and on the quality of the adjoing vowel
- therefore the transitions give us an indication of consonant identity
- diagram
- Invariance
- consonant place is partially defined by characteristic of segment itself
- e.g. burst / frication shape / nasality
- and the formant transitions into the adjoining vowel
- vowels are relatively invariant sounds
- but can be affected by e.g. lip rounding or nasality
- transitions are sensitive to the position of vowel formant frequencies
- thus formant transitions for e.g. /d/ are different across vowels
- diagram
- consistent property is locus frequency
- namely where all transition appear to arise
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