Acoustic Analysis of English Vowels with Praat

Chen Yu

2024年1月7日讀畢需時 3 分鐘

1. Introduction

In this project, we discuss Acoustic Phonetics, the study of the acoustic signals of speech sounds, and analyze the phonetic features of English vowels focusing on the first two formant frequencies (F1 and F2). Format means a resonating frequency of the air in the vocal tract. Frequency means the rate of oscillation in air pressure in a periodic sound wave. Vowels are characterized by three formats. We will describe the phonetic features of English vowel articulation. The following are our aim, method, and data analysis.

The definition of Acoustic:

Acoustics is the study of sound and its transmission, production, and effects. It explores how sound waves travel through different mediums, interact with surfaces, and impact our perception of hearing. Acoustic analysis helps us understand the properties of sounds, which is crucial in various fields such as music, communication, and environmental studies.

2. Procedure

(1)Download the Praat software

URL: Downloading Praat for Windows (uva.nl )

(2)Record the sounds

Open Praat, and we record 8 words with our cell phones (heed, hid, head, had, hawed, hod, hood, who’d).

Function:

To record➔New➔Record mono Sound… and ensure a quiet environment.
Then, save and Annotate the recording:
Next, save your recording as a wav. file.
Use the Annotate function to segment the recording into individual words and vowels.
Extract Vowel Segments:

First, select the segment corresponding to the vowel.

Second, use the View& Edit function to look at our waveforms and spectrograms.

Measure Formants:

First, place the cursor in the middle of the vowel segments where the vowel is stable.

Then, choose Formant➔Show formants to view formant tracks.

Next, you can see the F1 and F2 values at the point of stability.

(3)Collecting data

After we record the sounds, we will measure formants and put our data together. Then, we list them as forms.

(4)Analyzing the result

After we collect the data, we will analyze the results and report our findings, such as what we observe in the formant frequencies, explain how these frequencies correspond to the vowel height and backness, and reflect on how this exercise helps in understanding the acoustic properties of English vowels.

3. Aim

Our purpose is to record and analyze the acoustic properties of English vowels by using the Praat software and focusing on the first two formant frequencies (F1 and F2). The F1 Means the vowel height (how open or close the mouth is), and the F2 means vowel backness/frontness (how far forward or back in the mouth the highest point of the tongue is). Furthermore, this aids in a deeper understanding of phonetics, proving valuable for learning and teaching English pronunciation.

4. Method

All of our group members are the participants. We have 4 people to participate in this project. We will show the speakers’ information with the forms. We use our cellphones to record the sounds. Table 1 is our speakers’ information. We use the Pratt software to analyze our results. Pratt is an useful software to analyze the sounds’ durations and waveforms. We can put our records on the Praat and we can set up different items to get different results.