Module 1 – Phonetics and Representations of Speech

This module is being updated for 2024-25!

Welcome to Speech Processing!

In this first module/week, we will first give an overview of the course with a view to establishing the relevance of phonetics to speech technology (i.e., text-to-speech and automatic speech recognition). We’ll start to touch upon the following foundational questions in spoken language processing: What is text? What does it represent? How can you describe speech to a computer? How does that relate to phonetics?

After the course overview, we will start to make the connection between text and speech by looking at some visual representations of speech and relating them to the articulatory changes that take place in your mouth to create various speech sounds. We’ll also begin working with the speech annotation software Praat to annotate and analyse speech sound waves. We’ll briefly introduce the IPA and the concepts that relate the grid structure of the chart to the anatomical structures of human vocal tracts.

Since people are still choosing courses, we won’t assume that you will have watched this week’s videos or done the readings before the Thursday lecture. But if you are certain you are taking this course, we may want to get ahead on that (and on next week’s content).

Please note there is no lab in week 1! The first lab session will be in week 2 and will follow on from material from module 1. In general labs for a module are in the week after the lecture.

Lecture Slides

Lecture 1 part 1 slides (google slides) [updated 17/9/2024]

Lecture 1 part 2 slides (google slides) [updated 17/9/2024]

You download the slides in various formats from those links (go to File > Download and choose your file type)

These videos give a concise introduction to articulatory phonetics and International Phonetic Alphabet (IPA).  The first three videos comes from the UBC Visible Speech Channel, where you can also find a lot more demonstrations of how specific vocal tract articulations relate to speech sounds.  You can also find a lot of  further information on their eNunciate! project website.  There’s also more audio/video resources in the readings tab.

The last two videos come from the Virtual Linguistics Campus youtube channel.  That channel also has many useful videos on phonetics and linguistics more generally.  We’ll watch some more of these in module 2.

Total video to watch in this section: 20 minutes

Introduction to Articulatory Phonetics (Consonants)

An introduction to how people make speech sounds, i.e. articulatory phonetics, starting with consonants. This video is from the University of British Columbia eNunciate project.

An introduction to how people make speech sounds, i.e. articulatory phonetics, starting with consonants. This video is from the University of British Columbia eNunciate project.

 
Video on youtube

Introduction to Articulatory Phonetics (Vowels)

Now we look at how speakers produce vowel sounds (video from UBC eNunciate).

Now we look at how speakers produce vowel sounds (video from UBC eNunciate).

Video on Youtube

Introduction to the International Phonetic Alphabet

Having learned a bit about articulation of consonants and vowels, we see how speech sounds are abstracted in the International Phonetic Alphabet (video from the University of British Columbia eNunciate project).

Having learned a bit about articulation of consonants and vowels, we see how speech sounds are abstracted in the International Phonetic Alphabet (video from the University of British Columbia eNunciate project).

 

Video on youtube
 

Co-articulation

We don't usually make speech sounds in isolation. Speech is full of co-articulation: speech sounds can be influenced by preceding and following sounds. Video from the Virtual Linguistics Campus.

We don't usually make speech sounds in isolation. Speech is full of co-articulation: speech sounds can be influenced by preceding and following sounds. Video from the Virtual Linguistics Campus.

 

Video on youtube

Secondary Articulation

We also find secondary articulation in speech such as labialisation, palatalisation, velarisation, pharangealisation, and nasalisation.

We also find secondary articulation in speech such as labialisation, palatalisation, velarisation, pharangealisation, and nasalisation.

 

Video on youtube

Since this is the first module, here’s a reminder that the readings (or sometimes other media) in each module are categorised as

• Essential (read all of these)
• Recommended (read if you want to go deeper)
• Extra (only read if you’re interested/have previous background; these readings may be challenging and can be considered beyond the scope of the course)

Only material in the essential readings is directly examinable, but the other readings may help you make the connections that get higher marks.

Module 1 notes

• There’s two chapters of essential reading this week, but the chapter on transcription is also a reading for module 2.  So, if you don’t get through it all in week 1, that’s ok!  Just make sure you look at all the phonetics essential readings by the end of module 2.
• The recommended “readings” here are actually audio/video resources.  It’s usually a lot easier to grasp articulatory phonetics concepts by listening to actual sounds and seeing articulator differences.  So, we’d highly recommend using these as you read through the texts (the first recommended link is the companion website for Ladefoged and Johnson’s textbook).
• You don’t have to memorize the IPA chart for this course, but exploring the interactive IPA chart (e.g. Seeing Speech) should help you get oriented with the layout quickly.

Analysing speech articulations

This is your first PHON lab! This lab will give a quick introduction to Praat phonetics software. We’ll then explore speech articulations via visualisations in Praat and your own practice!

Labs will start in week 2 and will be held in Appleton Tower room 4.02 (the PPLS computing lab).  You should be assigned to one of the Wed 9-11am or 4-6pm labs.

You can find the lab materials for module 1 here: phon_lab_1

Remember, the labs for each module are in the week following the lecture. So, this week 2 lab will focus on module 1 material.  Try to watch the videos and go through the readings before the lab (as well as looking at the lab instructions!).

Maths refresher

If you’re already quite familiar with Praat and phonetics, but not so much with maths, now might be a good time to check out some of Sharon Goldwater’s maths tutorials here:
https://homepages.inf.ed.ac.uk/sgwater/math_tutorials.html

If you’re looking for a more comprehensive textbook that goes back to basics, you might find Foundation Maths by Croft and Davidson helpful (available through the University of Edinburgh library).

For the signal processing bit of the course (coming up next), you might also want to brush up on some trigonometry and vectors (the trig stuff is mostly relevant for the signal processing modules, the vectors/linear algebra is relevant to machine learning more generally):

• a great intro to vectors/linear algebra
• a quick trig refresher
• a nice video on radians

There’s more maths prep resources here: https://speech.zone/courses/prepare-for-study-in-speech-and-language-processing/brush-up-your-mathematics/

Or you could just get ahead with the assigned reading!

Lab Answers and Commentary

• Lab worksheet annotated with answers and commentary
• Sample textgrids: seashells, Peter Piper

Once you’ve attended the first lecture, it’s time to start watching the associated videos on phonetics and doing the readings listed in module 2. If you’re not enrolled and you want to take this course, please make sure that you enrol as soon as possible!

Key Terms

• Articulation
• Articulators
• Manner (of articulation)
• Place (of articulation)
• Voicing
• Consonant
• Vowel
• Vowel quality
• Phonetic
• Acoustic
• Phone
• Contrast

You may find some helpful discussion on the topics covered in this module on the Foundations of Speech part of the speech.zone forum.