L306
Phonetics
Lab 4: Cues for /r,l,j,w/
March 3, 2006
Preliminary
1. Find Wavesurfer under Start/Programs/Departmental Software/Wavesurfer
2. Make a shortcut for it on your desktop by right clicking on the Wavesurfer icon.
3. Try a test
recording of your
own voice in Wavesurfer by clicking on the red dot (Record)
toward the right. As soon as you click, the recording will begin.
Say a
few syllables and click the black square (for Stop).
Then click
on the rightward triangle (for Play) and
you should
hear what you recorded.
1. Rightclick on My
Network Places.
2. Leftclick on Map Network Drive
3. In the Folder box type \\bl-llab-media1\collect$
(that is `media-one' in the
middle)
4. Click Finish
5. Look for the L306 directory to find
our audio files.
The mission today is spectrogram reading -- in particular to learn to
differentiate /r,l,w,j/ and stop place of articulation on
spectrograms. Download the appropriate audio files and study
them. Compose some textual rules for making the
differentiations. Test your rules by making recordings of your
own voice of some minimal or near-minimal pairs to confirm your
description.
Exercise 1: /w/ vs. /l/
1. Copy file l-w.wav and l-w2.wav onto your desktop.
2. Study
the Wavesurfer spectrograms and compose some textual descriptions for
distinguishing /l/ from /w/ in various positions. Notice the two main
allophones of /l/.
Exercise 2: /l/ vs. /r/
1.
Copy r-l.wav into Wavesurfer
2. Compose some rules for distinguishing /r/ from /l/ in various positions. Is there anything distinctive about the clusters?
Exercise 3: Test yourself.
1.
Copy test1.wav, test2.wav
and test3.wav but do not listen to them. Can you
identify the glides from the spectrograms?
Exercise 4: Place of articulation
1. Pick up
stop-place.wav and try to
write some rules for identifying the place of articulation of the
stop. You may need to modify the rules for the clusters.