Introducing phonetics students to spectral components of vowel‐like sounds

Abstract

Undergraduate students in phonetics classes typically have difficulty understanding the concept behind Fourier analysis: that vowels can be decomposed into a series of spectral components. The concept can be introduced to students beginning with its inverse: that vowel‐like sounds can be constructed from a series of sine waves. The demonstration consists of a Praat script which students are given to work with as a homework assignment before vowels are covered in class (Praat is free cross‐platform software). The students are asked to input three frequencies, the script plots the time‐domain representation of each sine wave and the sum of the three sine waves, and the frequency‐domain representation of the sum of the three sine waves. It also plays the three sine waves and the sum of the three sine waves. Instructions include suggestions of frequencies for the students to try, and ask which vowels the results sound most like. Instructions also ask students to experiment with different frequencies to try to make sounds similar to other vowels. The students gain hands‐on experience with vowel‐like synthesis in order to give them an intuitive sense of the spectral components of vowel‐like sounds before the theoretical concepts are introduced in the classroom.