2. Acoustic phonetics: Concerned with describing the acoustics of speech. Also called speech acoustics. Big questions: (1) What are the relationships between speech movements and the acoustic properties of the speech signal; e.g., (a) when the tongue moves from a position high in the mouth to a position lower in the mouth, how does the sound pattern change (and why)?

3. Can we make sense of phonetic categories in terms of their underlying acoustic properties; e.g., (a)What acoustic properties do all the  sounds have in common (or  or  or  or  )? (b)What acoustic features are seen for sounds that are voiced (i.e., involving vocal cord vibration) vs. those that are unvoiced? (c)What acoustic features distinguish voices that sound breathy from those that do not? (d) Many other questions like these

4. 1 st formant (F 1 ) 3 rd formant (F 3 ) 2 nd formant (F 2 ) 1 st formant (F 1 ) 3 rd formant (F 3 ) 2 nd formant (F 2 ) 1 st formant (F 1 ) 3 rd formant (F 3 ) 2 nd formant (F 2 ) Example of a speech acoustics problem: What happens to the sound pattern when the vocal tract opens?

5. Another example of a speech acoustics problem What feature of the acoustic pattern changes as place of artic changes from bilabial (front) to alveolar (middle) to velar (back) ? What feature of the acoustic pattern voiced stops from unvoiced stops?

6. These a just a few examples of the kinds of problems that are studied in acoustic phonetics or speech acoustics. The main focus is on relationships between articulation and sound.

7. Who are these guys? Details differ quite a bit across photos, but – no trouble with recognizing this pattern.

8. Who’s this guy? What do these face recognition examples tell us about the underlying pattern matching mechanism? Is it stupid and rigid or smart and flexible?

11. What do these examples have to do with pattern recognition for speech? A category was being recognized: The Govenator or John Kerry or a woman’s face. In speech the relevant categories are speech sounds (/b/, /p/, /r/, /l/, etc.) prosodic features (e.g., stressed syllable vs. unstressed syllable, rising intonation vs. falling intonation), attributes of the speaker (e.g., man, woman, child), etc. Image examples showed: (1) the stimulus can vary quite a bit, but (2) the pattern recognition mechanism is usually unbothered by these variations. This is also true of speech.