PhonLinks
Phonetics is a practical science that involves
study of vocal tract movement, air flow, sound waves, and perception of sound
by the ear. All of these phenomena are well suited to demonstration on the world wide web.
This page contains links to web sites that
have excellent demos of the various aspects of phonetics. For the most part,
the list of links follows the order of presentation in Peter Ladefoged's A Course in Phonetics, which is now also
supported by its own website (Peter
Ladefoged's Vowels and Consonants), and for the
fifth edition, its own CD-ROM. There's also a list of more general linguistics
information resources at the end of this list.
Many of the topics listed below contain alternate
keyword suggestions in square brackets if you want to search the web for more
information. If you locate a site that looks like it belongs on this list,
please let me know at fitzpatricke@mail.montclair.edu.
Introduction
If
you'd like to learn more about the practical applications of phonetics, the
following sites are a sample of what you can find on the web.
Speech Synthesis [text-to-speech;tts]
(audio format output for
Windows is .wav)
AT&T
speech synthesizer (Click on "Demos," which demonstrates
different voice types, or try the "naturalvoices"
demo)
Talking computers from online demos
for Peter Ladefoged's Vowels and Consonants.
The page offers substantial productions from the Fonix
Acuvoice system, the Lernout and Hauspie Real Speak
system, and the SPRUCE system.
Speech synthesis
"Museum" at Grenoble (collection of synthesizers for European
languages)
DECtalk Software: Text-to-Speech Technology and
Implementation a paper by Wm. Hallahan with good
introduction to the phonetics involved in speech synthesis, also referred to as
Text-to-Speech, or TTS..
Speech Recognition
Speech Pathology and Audiology [Language Disorders; Communication Disorders;speech therapy]
Internet Guide for
Communication Disorders and Sciences
Video Voice
Speech Training System
Dictionary Creation
Teachionary 0.20 (translates and pronounces basic
vocabulary in 9 languages)
English Accents
Atlas of North American
English, an extensive survey of linguistic changes underway in North
American English. A project at the
Speech Accent Archive. A site from
American Accent Training. See
what a dot.com does with regional accents.
Speech Analysis Software
(freely downloadable; designed for several platforms)
WaveSurfer the software we will use for this course. If
you want to use it on your own computer, you can download it from here.
Chapter
1: Articulatory Phonetics, air flow and the vocal
tract
Voice production: air flow and vocal cord vibration
What is the
Larynx?
Vibrating
Vocal Cords (a motion picture of vocal cord vibration from the UCLA
phonetics lab)
The vocal tract: place of articulation
Sammy. An interactive sagittal section that
gives you a good feel for articulator action.
Vocal Tract Anatomy. from course notes of Prof. Kevin Russell at the
X-Ray
Database for Speech Research. X-ray films
of utterances from the Speech Perception and Production Laboratory at
Vocal tract movement: manner of
articulation
The
Consonant Phones of English (consonant symbols in IPA and other systems;
you can hear each symbol pronounced. George Dillon's Phonetic Resources Guide)
Symbols
for American English Consonant Sounds (sample words for each symbol with
good graphics for each IPA symbol. Kevin Russell's Course Notes)
English Vowel Sounds
Making English Vowels. Tongue, jaw, and larynx videos.
Symbols
for American English Vowel Sounds (vowel symbols in IPA and other
systems; you can hear each symbol pronounced. George Dillon's Phonetic
Resources Guide)
IPA
Symbols for English Vowel Sounds (sample words for each symbol with good
graphics for each IPA symbol. Kevin Russell's Course Notes)
Chapter
2: Phonetic Transcription
Deciding the Phoneme Set for a Language
Phonemes
and Allophones (from Prof. Russell's course notes)
The International Phonetic Alphabet
The
International Phonetic Association (IPA)
Vowel/Consonant
Transcription
Transcription
(test your transcription skills on one, two, and polysyllabic words; a really
well-designed site! Click on "exercises" to get to the testing. More of Prof. Russell's Course Notes.)
Chapter
3: The Consonants of English
Articulation Processes
Stop
Articulation Kevin Russell's discussion of stop closure and release.
Palatography.
Description of various means for getting information on
contact between articulators. From the UCLA Phonetics
Lab.
Strong and Weak Fricatives. Description of Fricatives. From the Center
for Spoken Language Understanding at the Oregon Graduate Institute.
Affricates. Description of Affricates
from OGI.
Speech Accent Archive. (see reference above). The archive is useful in exploring
non-native speaker differences in articulation.
Chapter 4: English Vowels and Phonological Rules
Vowels
in unstressed syllables (more of Prof. Russell's Course Notes)
Stress in
English
Discussion of word stress, with examples. From Henry Limouze at
Vowels in British and American English
from George Dillon's Phonetic Resources at U of
Chapter
5: English Words and Sentences
Lexical Tones in a Tone Language
Mandarin
Tones. Speech samples demonstrating
contrastive tones in Mandarin from Chilin Shih’s Introduction to General
Phonetics webpages at UIUC.
Prosody
POW (Prosody on the
Web). Excellent exercises demonstrating variation in phrasing, focus, and
pitch
Plato. Find
the nuclear syllable in an utterance.
Univ of
Stuttgart Demo of F0 Contour Generation Program An
interactive site that allows the user to generate all possible intonation
contour combinations.
ToBI.
Describes the conventions for transcribing the prosodic
structure of spoken language.
Transcription
of German Intonation: The Stuttgart System Description of a ToBI enriched transcription system to aid in the
representation of discourse in German.
Chapters
6 & 7: General Phonetic Categories of the World's Languages
Airstream Mechanisms - clear definitions; text only.
Phonation:
States of the Glottis
Airstream Mechanisms and Phonation Types spoken samples
of the data from CIP, Chapter 6
Types of
Phonation
The
Case of the Language Lineup nice exercise from MIT in language
identification
Guide
to Voice Onset Time in Stops
Chapter
8: Acoustic Phonetics
What is a wave? .
Sound (and other) wave simulations.
Sound waves. A
tuturial by Kevin Russell.
Sine Wave Combination
Demo Applets allow you to see the effect of combining sine wave. A U of Delaware demo from William Idsardi.
Vocal
Vowels Audio demo of the modification of the source harmonics by
differently shaped "vocal tract" filters. From the
San Franciso Exploratorium.
Voice Production Tutorials from the
Formants
More tutorial information from Kevin Russell.
Speech Visualization Tutorial An
easy-to-follow tutorial from
Spectrogram Reading. A tutorial from the Center for Spoken Language Understanding at the
Oregon Graduate Institute.
Spectrogram
Reading Practice Presents several spectrograms with multiple choice
questions on their contents. From Bruce Hayes at the UCLA
Phonetics Lab.
Pattern
Playback A page at the Haskins Lab site demonstrating the effect of formant
transitions on the perception of place of articulation.
Voice Onset
Time - English Plosives Compared Spectrograms and Waveforms for the English
stop series. From Kate Morton's Image Resources at the
Dynamic
Segmental Models of Speech Coarticulation (Target
vowel spectograms)
General
Resources in Linguistics and Phonetics
Phonetics Resources. George
Dillon's collection from the
CMU's
Speech Technology Hyperlinks Page
Online Phonetics Course
at Lausanne Univ (good graphics and definitions
for IPA symbols plus vocal diagrams for each symbol)
Bucknell's Course in Linguistic Analysis: Sounds and Words
University
College London Department of Linguistics and Phonetics
Teaching English
Intonation with a Visual Display of F0
Introduction
to Phonetics. Arizona State Univ. Dept of Speech & Hearing Sciences
The Linguist List (resource for all
areas of Linguistics; research; job postings; inquiries, etc.)
Other
(Off-line) Resources in Phonetics
Sounds of the IPA. The sounds are
presented in the exact order in which they are shown on the current Chart. They
are spoken by John Wells, Professor of Phonetics at University College London
and former Secretary of the IPA, and Jill House, Lecturer in Phonetics at UCL.
Check this site for availability of the cassette version or CD-ROM version in MSU's language lab.
Phonetic Symbol Guide. 1986.
William A. Ladusaw and Geoffrey K. Pullum.