How Do We Change Our Mouths to Shape Waves? Formants

How do we create different kinds of sound waves when we only have one mouth? What properties do those speech waves have? In this week's episode, we talk about resonance and formants: how different parts of a speech wave can get amplified, how that relates to how we talk, and how the sounds of vowels are influenced by our tongue and lip setups.
This is Topic #46!
This week's tag language: Samoan!
Other of our phonetics videos:
Vowel Movements: • Vowels and the IPA
The Periodic Table of Speech Sounds: • The International Phon...
Uncommon Sounds: • Non-Pulmonic Consonant...
The Virtual Linguistics Campus has a good look at in more detail at the technical aspects here:
• PHO120 - Sound Waves
Find us on all the social media worlds:
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Twitter: / thelingspace
Facebook: / thelingspace
And at our website, www.thelingspace.com/ !
You can also find our store at the website, www.thelingspace.com/store/
Our website also has extra content about this week's topic at www.thelingspace.com/episode-46/
(Although not until later this week - still need to finish this up while traveling)
We also have forums to discuss this episode, and linguistics more generally.
Sources:
I'm away from my books at the moment, but the details for this video were taken from Ken Stevens' Acoustic Phonetics and Henry Rogers' The Sounds of Language.
Looking forward to next week!

Пікірлер: 61

  • @CeliaRebelDiva
    @CeliaRebelDiva3 жыл бұрын

    I want to hug you right now. This is the clearest explanation of this I’ve seen yet. Thank you!!!

  • @bach63139
    @bach631394 жыл бұрын

    Your videos are great! I don't know how I'd get through my Speech and Voice Science class without them... Thank you!!

  • @jocelynchristinamarzan9436
    @jocelynchristinamarzan94365 жыл бұрын

    Thank you. Great supplement for my acoustic phonetics class, especially the clarification regarding changes in F1 associated with length of the distance between the vocal folds and the "top" of the tongue.

  • @UpNfamish2
    @UpNfamish23 жыл бұрын

    Very good explanation without going deep in physics

  • @zuzanadadova423
    @zuzanadadova4237 жыл бұрын

    Oh, so happy to have found you. I am doing a PhD thesis on phonetics and this helps me understand basic facts since I have no-one to explain spectrogram work to me. Thank you! Great job!

  • @wenyichu3486
    @wenyichu34867 жыл бұрын

    This is super helpful! I was reading a paper on phonological perception and couldn't find a better explanation on formants than yours:) I also quite like the quick review you pulled up at the end. Thank you!

  • @dolphinMOV
    @dolphinMOV7 жыл бұрын

    Great channel! Well-organized information, thank you!

  • @patpatngx
    @patpatngx7 жыл бұрын

    Studying Fant's model and formant frequency for the upcoming midterm. Thank you so much for explaining these so clearly with nice examples! (I always wind up watching your videos in midterm seasons)

  • @etantao
    @etantao4 жыл бұрын

    Very helpful and clear explanation!

  • @michellenapier4993
    @michellenapier49937 жыл бұрын

    I love all these videos!

  • @gendalfgray7889
    @gendalfgray788914 күн бұрын

    Excellent video 👏👏👏

  • @ucaneriste7497
    @ucaneriste74978 жыл бұрын

    Well explained. Glad to meet this splendid channel.

  • @thelingspace

    @thelingspace

    8 жыл бұрын

    Thanks so much for joining us! Glad you liked it. ^_^

  • @SpeechyTx
    @SpeechyTx8 жыл бұрын

    This totally helping me study for the Praxis in SLP! Thank you!

  • @thelingspace

    @thelingspace

    8 жыл бұрын

    +SLP-CSD Great! Glad to be able to help there. ^_^

  • @stefanie369
    @stefanie3696 жыл бұрын

    I have to say I find your videos very helpful! I learnt about this topic weeks ago, but since there are also other subjects I have to focus on in my studies, I nearly forgot everything. Your videos are helping me remember and understanding everything better, haha! I have one question tho! Will there be a video where you cover all the -let's say- mathematical stuff about speech analysis?? Like, I have never been good at maths so following my prof doing all his calculations has been difficult :'D

  • @abhishek_sengupta
    @abhishek_sengupta3 жыл бұрын

    amazing explanation ❤️❤️

  • @robertandersson1128
    @robertandersson11288 жыл бұрын

    Your [y]:s are getting better! Keep up the good work! Thank you very much for this video. Funny when physics and linguistics co-operate in such an obvious way!

  • @thelingspace

    @thelingspace

    8 жыл бұрын

    Thanks! I do try. You'd figure with all the French here, I'd do better with the [y], and yet. ^^; But yeah, the physics of speech is really interesting. We've already done the fricative and plosive phonetics in another video, but I'm looking forward to covering more of this (and also overlaps between music and language processing, which I've been meaning to do for a while).

  • @bonbonpony
    @bonbonpony8 жыл бұрын

    This is not true. The pitch of the voice is not changed by the motion of the tongue inside the vocal tract (the analogy with the bottle is inappropriate in this place), but due to the changes in tension of the vocal folds. There are muscles in the glottis which can contract or release and reposition the little bones which stretch or unstretch the vocal folds. The more stretched they are (more tension), the higher-pitched sound they produce in the same air under the same air pressure and the same shape & length of the vocal tract. The changes in the shape of the vocal tract (e.g. with the tongue) are responsible for something else: they work like a resonant cavity which can filter out certain frequencies from the spectrum produced by the vocal folds. When they filter out the higher harmonics and there are only the lower ones around the base tone, you will hear an "oo" sound. If the shape of the resonant cavity filters out the medium band, the "ah" sound comes out. When there's a lot of high harmonics but not so much of low harmonics, you hear the "ee" sound, etc.

  • @antonshcheklein532
    @antonshcheklein5323 жыл бұрын

    Thank you, pal

  • @chrisylthemissile26
    @chrisylthemissile266 жыл бұрын

    Slow it down to 0.75, you'll understand better

  • @user-ui7wu3kr9q

    @user-ui7wu3kr9q

    5 жыл бұрын

    but the pitch doesn't go down as the speech slows down

  • @985Mindy

    @985Mindy

    3 жыл бұрын

    i just did that then saw the comment lol

  • @jelee3656
    @jelee36565 жыл бұрын

    Hey I cannot find the extra content on the website!! I would love to read more about it. Will you please let me know where I can find more info on your website? Thank you for this awesome video!!

  • @GregorMattedi
    @GregorMattedi9 жыл бұрын

    Pretty cool ... I always wondered how we can pronounce so many different sounds with spaces like mouth and throat

  • @thelingspace

    @thelingspace

    9 жыл бұрын

    +Mattedi, Julia Yeah! It's really amazing when you think about it. We're super versatile. ^_^

  • @BarryPennock
    @BarryPennock4 жыл бұрын

    By far the best explanation of formants for beginners but you should slow down. As Chrisyl the Missile says, at 0,75 it is easier to understand.

  • @pksferdinandd8227
    @pksferdinandd82276 жыл бұрын

    thanks a lot! what about other formants like the tip of the tongue or the twang, how does that work? How many formants are there in total?

  • @reptarhouse
    @reptarhouse6 жыл бұрын

    Thank you for this amazing content. I just thought I'd let you know that when I click on the link for the extra material for episode 46 it sends me to an error page on your website. And when I go to your website and click on episode 46 it sends me directly to youtube.

  • @tinakleven1530
    @tinakleven15306 жыл бұрын

    Hey! Great video! Do you know what is the source of your statement that we generally only need the first and second formant to discriminate a vocal? Also for that our brain is doing this? I have an assignment for school, it would be very helpful if you could direct me! Thank you

  • @SunriseRabbit
    @SunriseRabbit Жыл бұрын

    Love this video!!🎉music at the end is too loud to hear the speech though 😊

  • @luciadelviso9342
    @luciadelviso93425 жыл бұрын

    Thank you so much, but slow down a bit, please! Thank you for all your effort!

  • @rhubarb4601
    @rhubarb46018 жыл бұрын

    I've enjoyed this episode. Your voice tone brings my mind to an alpha state. Brilliant. Thank you for your videos.

  • @thelingspace

    @thelingspace

    8 жыл бұрын

    Thanks! Glad you like the videos, and that my voice agrees with your mind. ^_^

  • @originalvonster
    @originalvonster3 жыл бұрын

    How do you find the resonant frequency of your vocal tract before producing different vowels? Is there a way?

  • @lindsaybaron9368
    @lindsaybaron93686 жыл бұрын

    This man is literally saving me for my CMD final

  • @thelingspace

    @thelingspace

    6 жыл бұрын

    Thanks so much! Always glad to hear that kind of thing. ^_^

  • @JamesHUN
    @JamesHUN6 жыл бұрын

    man you need a shoulder massage so bad! cool vid!

  • @coreylevinson7339
    @coreylevinson73399 жыл бұрын

    fascinating..you dont really notice the shift in position of tongue from "eee" to "ooo" & you especially dont notice the lips curling. That's really great. I wonder if you lose all of your teeth, does the frequency of your vowels go lower, since you have more space for the sound to get out?

  • @thelingspace

    @thelingspace

    9 жыл бұрын

    +Corey Levinson Yeah, not huge changes in the way we articulate actually can cause big differences in the sounds we produce! And that's an interesting question, about the teeth. I'm not aware of any research that's looked at this specifically, but there probably would be a variety of differences. Teeth actually provide more stabilization than you think, as well, for these sounds: we used them to help brace our lips for different sounds. And without teeth, the shape of your oral cavity would also be different, more closed. It might be hard to find a group to study this with, but if it's out there, it'd be really interesting to look at! ^_^

  • @valouroxx
    @valouroxx9 жыл бұрын

    If only you released that video a little bit ealrier, I could have gotten a better grade on my exam. I'm sure I'll get a good grade though, but still. Awesome channel by the way.

  • @thelingspace

    @thelingspace

    9 жыл бұрын

    +Valentin Vrielynck Thanks! Sorry about the timing, but glad you're liking the videos. ^_^

  • @mariebellnero585
    @mariebellnero5857 жыл бұрын

    hi I have somes songs on youtube I wont to know if iam singing with vowels

  • @Kkulbul
    @Kkulbul8 жыл бұрын

    What does origin(the locus) of the formant means?

  • @maryknighttttttttttttttttt
    @maryknighttttttttttttttttt Жыл бұрын

    It is true that the frequency of a sound is positively related to the amplitude of the sound, that is the sounds that are louder are also higher and the sounds that are quieter are also lower?

  • @abdulgafoor7076
    @abdulgafoor70762 жыл бұрын

    Sir how vocal folds vibrate at multiple frequencies at a time which are called harmonics.. Will pls explain sir

  • @doghouse010
    @doghouse0108 жыл бұрын

    "Average F2 value is so low of 950hz" means 950 and its neighbors are more greatly amplified so we perceive it as a slightly higher pitch? Like the bottle w/ less space? When you say average F2 you mean the fundamental pitch and all the partial frequencies averaged?

  • @thelingspace

    @thelingspace

    8 жыл бұрын

    +doghouse010 By average F2 value, I mean across speakers, not the frequencies within a speaker. Even within women who speak the same dialect of the same language, there's still variation in what individual people will do. So the reported values in the video are all from averages done across dozens of speakers. As for the F2 value being low, it is still higher than F1 values, and if we could isolate the second formant, we'd definitely hear it as higher pitch than whatever the F1 is, like the bottle with less space. However, what we generally perceive as the pitch of someone's voice is what their fundamental frequency is - the base rate at which their vocal folds vibrate. We don't really hear [i] as higher pitch than [u], even if it has a higher F2 value and a similar F1 value; we hear the fundamental frequency of the person's voice as their pitch. Hope this helps! ^_^

  • @lizettevillalobos5267
    @lizettevillalobos52676 жыл бұрын

    3:13 excitingggg!

  • @nataliecheuk5456
    @nataliecheuk54568 жыл бұрын

    What does F0 mean? I know about F1 and F2 but what does it mean when F0=100 Hz? Is that the first component in a spectrogram? thanks.

  • @thelingspace

    @thelingspace

    8 жыл бұрын

    +Natalie Cheuk This is one of the more confusing labeling choices that got made in linguistics, really. F0 is the fundamental frequency: from a speech perspective, that's whatever the base rate of vibration cycles per second your larynx is producing. So F0 isn't a formant at all; it's just the original frequency of the sound wave. If a speaker's F0 is 100 Hz, that means they're having your larynx vibrate 100 times in a second. Hope that makes sense!

  • @jeykim1511

    @jeykim1511

    6 жыл бұрын

    this is 2 years too late but F0 is pitch

  • @JustinWhite7861
    @JustinWhite78619 ай бұрын

    you tubes! :)

  • @InezAllen
    @InezAllen9 жыл бұрын

    so basically our vocal tracts are really complicated soda bottles? ;)

  • @thelingspace

    @thelingspace

    9 жыл бұрын

    +Inez Allen Yeah, I don't think you can get a deposit back on what we've got. I'm glad my soda doesn't come with tongues in it. (But in terms of physics... more or less?) ^_^

  • @marclikens
    @marclikens3 жыл бұрын

    I love the energy, and earnest attempt to explain this topic is an easily understandable way, but there is a fair amount of misinformation in this video. One funny example is the statement early on that "your vocal folds basically vibrate at a set rate when you speak", when in fact the fundamental frequency of this fellow's own speech bounces around quite a bit throughout this video. The fundamental frequency of speech can and does move around a lot--not as much as in singing--and is important to the meaning the of the speech (raised pitch for a question, tonal languages like Chinese or Thai).... but nevermind: great video, some details seem a little off.

  • @djstatyk1540
    @djstatyk15406 жыл бұрын

    Yoyoyoyoyoyoyyyyyyy

  • @enriquebarbanera
    @enriquebarbanera3 жыл бұрын

    He kind of sounds sometimes like the Jordan Peterson of Linguistics

  • @bleensteen9331
    @bleensteen93315 жыл бұрын

    'Your vocal folds vibrate at the rate they vibrate!' and 'You can't really change the fundamental frequency of the wave!'. Through the whole video your speaking pitch varies about 2 octaves it's almost absurd to be talking like that and speaking those words at the same time. I think that wasn't your point but the way you worded it is quite misleading.

  • @premireland
    @premireland6 жыл бұрын

    good idea but you talk too fast make me can't get to the point.