Sixth miniproject: "Spoken English: speech editing"

So far during this term we have been concerned with written texts. But of course the major medium in which a living language is used is speech - the acoustic medium, in face-to-face communication (or of course via technical channels such as voicemail, telephone, radio and television).

In this miniproject we will take a look at digital recordings of English speech, and examine their properties using special computer programs: a speech editor, and a phonetic analysis program.

Tasks:

1. Check the web for examples of speech waveforms, spectrum, spectrogramme and fundamental frequency (F0) displays.
2. Define the following terms: waveform, spectrum, spectrogramme, fundamental frequency (F0)?
3. What is meant by the "annotation" or "labelling" of speech?
4. Using a speech editor programme, examine the waveform of a short sample of English speech (10-20 seconds), and identify the different kinds of segments - consonants of different kinds, simple vowels, and diphthongs.