Acoustic phonetics

Acoustic phonetics is the study of how speech sounds travel, from the moment they are
produced by the speaker until they reach the listener's ear. Descriptions of speech sounds in
these terms date back as far as 1830 (Willis), but the invention of the sound spectrograph
(1945) was the major technological breakthrough that made the analysis and visualization of
the speech signal possible. Acoustic phonetics looks at the physical properties of sound,
including the frequency, intensity and duration. Acoustic phonetics is a subfield of phonetics
which investigates the acoustic aspects of speech sounds, like the amplitude of a waveform,
its duration, its fundamental frequency, and other properties of its frequency spectrum.
Learning acoustic phonetics is of great significance for language teachers in their
pronunciation teaching and speech therapists in assessment and planning of remediation.

Sound wave: The sounds we hear are caused by vibrations in the air. These vibrations are
conveyed through the air in the form of waves. A sound wave is the alternating pattern of
high and low air pressure areas. When sound is produced, it creates a sound wave that
travels through the acoustic medium (this is usually the air, but it could also be water, wood,
metal etc., as sound can travel through anything except a vacuum!). When the sound wave
reaches our eardrums, it causes them to vibrate; our auditory system then converts these
vibrations into neural impulses. We experience these neural impulses as sound, as a
pressure wave causes particles in the surrounding acoustic medium to vibrate. Linguists
examine the movement of sound by studying the sound waves that are created during
speech.
There are four different properties of sound waves: wavelength, period, amplitude, and
frequency.

Wavelength: Wavelength of a sound wave can be defined as the distance between the two
successive crests or two successive troughs of a wave. Also, we can say that the wavelength
is the distance of one crest from another crest or of one trough from another trough. This
wavelength of sound is always measured in the direction of the wave. That means that the
wavelength is the horizontal length of one cycle of the wave.

Frequency: Frequencies refer to the rate at which a sound wave cycles from positive (crest),
to negative (trough), and back to positive. Frequency is measured in hertz (Hz) which
represents the number of cycles per second. The majority of human sounds falls between
20-20000 Hz thus sounds that occur out of this range can be difficult to perceive correctly,
or at all. Any given sound is composed of a number of different frequencies. Different
combinations of frequencies account for the difference in the sounds you recognize around
you. A speech sound contains two types of frequencies: fundamental frequency (F0) which
relates to vocal cord function and reflects the rate of vocal cord vibration during phonation
(pitch) and formant frequency which relates to vocal tract configuration.

Amplitude: Amplitude is the measurement of the intensity or strength of a sound. More

specifically, amplitude is the extent to which air particles are moved or altered during
changes in atmospheric pressure caused by sound waves. The greater the change in the
sound wave, the greater the amplitude. The amplitude of a sound wave is represented in
height. When the sound is very loud, the amplitude of the sound wave is high. On the other
hand, when the sound is quiet, the amplitude is low. A decibel is a scientific unit that
measures the intensity of sound. Humans speak normally at 60 decibels.

Period: The period of a sound wave refers to the amount of time it takes for the sound to
create a complete wave cycle. The period of a wave is the time required for one complete
cycle of the wave to pass by a point. So, the period is the amount of time it takes for a wave
to travel a distance of one wavelength.

Formant:

A formant is a concentration of acoustic energy around a particular frequency in the speech

wave. There are several formants, each at a different frequency, roughly one in each 1000Hz
band. Or, to put it differently, formants occur at roughly 1000Hz intervals. Each formant
corresponds to a resonance in the vocal tract.

Sine Waves vs Complex Waves: Sine waves are waveforms that have very simple, regular
repeating patterns. The number of ‘cycles’ in the waveform (the number of complete
repetitions in the period waveform) reflects the number of times the vocal folds have
opened within the time frame displayed. This is known as the fundamental frequency (f0),
which is measured in Hertz (Hz). A frequency of 200Hz means that there are 200 hundred
complete cycles per second within the waveform, so 200 times the vocal folds have opened.
In reality, most speech sound waves have a rather complex pattern, and are known
as complex waves. These are made up of two or more simple sine waves, and the
fundamental frequency can also be calculated on complex waveforms by counting the
number of cycles per second on a waveform.
Periodic vs Aperiodic sound waves: Periodic sound waves repeat precisely and display a
regular pattern. Periodic motion is performed, for example, by a rocking chair, a bouncing
ball, a musical note, a vibrating tuning fork, a swing in motion, the Earth in its orbit around
the Sun, and a water wave. Aperiodic sound waves are irregular and show no pattern of
precise repetition. The aperiodic sound /h/ when examined closely can be readily seen to be
a non-repeating or random pattern. No part of the waveform pattern of this sound is
repeated at regular intervals, therefore the sound is said to be aperiodic. Examples are a
shot, the bursting of a paper bag or the banging of a door.

Sine and complex waveforms are periodic, meaning their cycles are regular and repetitive.
The types of speech sounds that would appear as a periodic sound wave are voiced sounds,
such as vowels or nasals. Since such sounds have regularly repeating waveforms, they can
also be decoded through ‘Fourier analysis’ which breaks down the component sine waves.
This type of graph is called a spectrum, which does not measure time. Instead, the x-axis
measures frequency, and the y-axis represents the sound pressure level.