LING 1010 Lecture 4: 9/6: Physical Properties of Phonemes

• School: UConn
• Department: Linguistics
• Course: LING 1010
• Professor: Akihiko Arano( T A)

Document Summary

Phonemes are the smallest segments of speech that lead to a meaningful difference. Each phoneme is represented by a symbol that is called ipa. There is a one-to-one correspondence between phonemes and ipa symbols (not true for phonemes and english alphabet) Sound is a disturbance in air pressure. , or how closely packed the air molecules are. It is a wave that travels through the air. Amplitude - measure of the force applied to an area of air during compression. The perceptual effect of amplitude is a change in loudness. Amplitude is not important to phoneme distinction. Frequency - measure of the number of compression cycles that a wave completes in a given unit of time. Perceptual effect is a change in pitch. Frequency is not important for phoneme distinction. There are two components of voice: vocal folds and vocal tract. Your vocal tract acts as a filter to the sound created by your vocal folds.