Speech Review Sheet Answers

Answer the following questions in the space provided.

1. What is the place and manner of articulation for the sounds [t] and [d]?

They are both alveolar stops. [t] is voiceless, and [d] is voiced.

2. What is a fricative? Give an example.

Fricatives are produced by forcing the breath stream through a narrow channel or constriction, in the vocal tract. e.g [f] and [v].

3. Define the term speaker normalization.

It refers to the ability of the listener to use the pattern recognition of a speech signal to identify the vowels spoken by different speakers.

4. What is the invariance problem in speech perception? Describe at least two factors that contribute to the absence of invariance.

The lack of invariance refers to the fact that there isn't any one-to-one relationship between the acoustic properties of a given sound and its intended meaning. If speech sounds were produced in exactly the same way in all contexts, they would be invariant.
Factors that contribute:

• Coarticulation
• Different length of vocal tracts in men, women and children
• Variability of phonemes depending on context
• Articulatory undershoot (typical formants may never be produced)
• Etc

Answer the following multiple-choice questions.

1. b

2. b

3. e

4. a

Fill in the blanks.

1. acoustic phonetics

2. citation form

3. 125, 200, 300

Decide whether the following statements are True/False.
In the case where you decide that the statement is false, then change the statement to make it correct.

1. False the are all voiceless.

2. True

3. False, the lungs are not part of the vocal tract.