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August 2002

"Every year it's the same thing."

Epsilon + Rhoticity Sign, IPA 303 + 419
[EÕ], [ɛ˞]
My first guess at this was [I], and I knew what this spectrogram was. Whatever it is, it ain't lowered (for those of you who believe Canadian Shift is part of the American "Third" dialect). Note the F1, which is in the mid range, as opposed to the vowels in the following syllables, which are higher (i.e. have a lower F1). So we're not dealing with the world's highest vowel, even if we are dealing with something that is higher than mid. The F2 indicates an extremely front vowel, at least for the first 75 msec or so. So very front and not /i/. So /e/ or /E/, and get on with things. The radical lowering of the F2 and F3 during this vowel is coarticulatory, or assimilatory, depending on whether you think these things are phonetic or phonological. There's something coming up dragging the F3 down out of all proportion, and as a resonance it either has to cross the F2 resonance (and cause everything to get renumbered) or it has to push the F2 out of the way. So for those of you who believe the F3 of /r/ is the F2 of the surrounding vowels, explain to me what's happening to the F2 here. My /e's tend to be quite high (see the one coming up), and the F2 tends to move up (i.e. the vowel tends to diphthongize frontwards), so /I/ and /E/ are the best guesses here. Plus the /r/ colo(u)ring. I do not want to get into the debate about whether there's a glottal stop at the beginning of this.

Lower-case V, IPA 1298
[v], [v]
This may be the best [v] I've ever produced. It's noisy. It's at least partially voiced, and it doesn't look like anything else. It's tough to tell from the F1 transitions, since there really aren't any, and the F2 and F3 transitions aren't helping, since they're falling anyway. So there's no transitional information to tell us about place. The fricative is vaguely reminiscent of Esh noise, in that it's fairly broad band and cuts out in the low frequencies. So if you guessed Esh here, give yourself a point, but then try to make a word out of the rest of it. The noise is unfiltered, i.e. isn't shaped by vocal tract resonances (at least to the extent that the noise is pretty even across frequencies--as long as you ignore the low frequencies). Another great argument for anteriority is the fact that there's an /r/ in the vicinity, and there's not a speck of a sign of the /r/ resonances filtering the noise. So it's probably fairly front in the mouth, at or in front of the incisors. Since this is English, that only leaves a (inter)dental or labiodental. Weakly voiced. If you think it's Theta, again try to make word out of it.

Turned R, IPA 151
[¨], [ɹ]
Okay, here's where we'd get to talk about the 'beads on a string' model, and how it fails. I 'm not at all sure there's actually a distinct /r/ moment here, but there's really no other explanation as to the F3 being so low through the preceding fricative. I've segmented off the bit I have with the following ideas: 1) This is Spectrogram Reading, and it Just Wouldn't Be Fair to include a segment for which there is no useful cue. 2) Even if I didn't know what the utterance is, there's no reason for the F3 here to be so low, so there must be an /r/ in here somewhere. 3) This being phonetic transcription, I have to linearize somehow 4) It seems to me there's a hint of something resonant in the tail end of the fricative (note the apparent resonance rising from about 500 Hz just around the 300 msec mark). 5) I can convince myself that the F2 is stable from when it comes in, just before 300 msec to about 330 msec. 6) Something is going on in the resonances above 3000. See the F4? See how it's weak and sort of gets louder at about 400 msec. So, I have decided that the /r/ is in there somewhere, and that's where I put it.

Lower-case I, IPA 301
[i], [i]
This vowel is a hair higher (has a lower F1) than the initial vowel, so whatever you called the first one, make sure this one is higher. The F1 is remarkably flat from about 300 msec all the way to about 750. This is a long span to be so flat, especially with the pitch changes and all the fronty-backy-F3-swoopy stuff going on above. Since the F2 eventually ends up above 2000 Hz, which is way high, this is way front. /i/ is the frontest vowel I can think of, and it's higher than whatever the first one is to boot.

Lower-case J, IPA 153
[j], [j]
Regarded as the approximant (i.e. consonantal) equivalent of /i/, this doesn't really look like anything but a vowel, except for a tiny bit of noise and fuzzy stuff in F4 and above. Initial in a word or phrase, I can make this a real fricative. But here it's fully voiced, not really /r/ colo(u)red (who can tell with the F2 that high), and it's flanked by things I definitely want to be vowels. I call this object 'jod', which I believe is the name of a Hebrew letter for something in this range. I think I picked this up from Sharon Hargus. 'Jod' is that object for which "j" is the IPA and "y" is the American symbol, the non-syllabic counterpart of /i/. I don't usually call the offglide of [ai] [ei] [oi] type diphthongs "jod", but I think they're the same phonological object. But I digress. This looks like an /i/, but it's short and flanked by /r/-colo(u)red vowels. The F1 dips just a little, suggesting a moment of greater stricture/lesser aperture, again consistent with /j/.

Lower-case I + Rhoticity Sign, IPA 101 + 419
[iÕ], [i˞]
Well, who knows. But it's definitely /r/ colo(u)red.

Turned R, IPA 151
[¨], [ɹ]
Well, if there was any question, this would clear it up. The F3 barely clears the 2000 Hz mark, but there you go. I also think there's a short F3 steady state here, but that's arguable. The main thing is the low F3.

Small Capital I, IPA 319
[I], [I]
The thing to notice here is that the F3 rises again to normal, but the F2 doesn't follow it. It rises all right, but not in parallel with the F3 as in the preceding series of segments. But this thing is still quite high (check the F1), and not as front as /i/. Two guesses. Well, maybe three.

Lower-case T, IPA 103
[t], [t]
There's a nice clean gap (for a change) here, indicating a stop. This looks pretty voiceless, but there are some pops down there that make me wonder. There's no hint here of velar pinch, nor of bilabial transitions (the F2 seems to sink a little but not so far as to suggest a definite bilabial and the F3 doesn't indicate anything but coronal.

Lower-case S, IPA 132
[s], [s]
Frankly, this looks like a voiceless /z/. So guess what. What I mean is is that this seems real short and weak for an /s/. But there you go.

Eth + Raising Sign, IPA 131 + 429
[D3], [ð̝]
Foul, you cry. Well, I'm trying to be consisntent with IPA recommendations regarding diacritics. True there's a stop-moment followed by an incredibly short fricative moment, followed by some aspiration. But just try to make a word out of that. Phonologically, this is an Eth, the beginning of the word 'the' (in case you haven't figured out that far ahead). Produced as a phonetic affricate, it might be the beginning of a prosodic phrase (actually, I'm not so sure, but work with me), and might be fortis, i.e. produced with more forceful articulation. So if you start with something fricative, and raise it, you get something that's a stop. Or an affricate. Or something like that. Okay, and it's voiceless, but I just couldn't deal with all that.

Schwa, IPA 322
[«], [ə]
Nice, shortish vowel. Evenly spaced formants. Schwa.

Lower-case S, IPA 132
[s], [s]
This is a more canonical /s/. Very broad band, almost white, at least for the frequencies we can see. Some hints that the highest amplitudes are off the top of the spectrogram (use your imagination if you can't just convince yourself that the higher frequencies are just a little higher in amplitude).

Lower-case E + Small Capital I, IPA 302 + 319
[eI], [eɪ]
There's precious little evidence of F1 movement here, except perhaps at the very end of the vowel. I tend to ignore that since it's obviously coincident with the sharp F2 transition, suggesting that this section of this vowel is transitional and should be ignored. On the other hand, you can't miss that F2. This is the movingest (?) F2 in /e/ I've ever produced. So, if you take the F1 to be middish, and the F2 to be front and getting fronter, what would you have?